


The Wretched and Joyful

by horchatita394



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 45,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchatita394/pseuds/horchatita394
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And for the record, it is marriage, is it not? Someone is going to die.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THE DAMN ARRANGED MARRIAGE FIC IS GOING UP GUYS. Y'all I've been building this fic up so much I hope you like it even a little bit. I'm going chapter by chapter so your encouragement is very much necessary <3

The small grey picture is passed around the table like a curious piece of gossip, and yet so much hangs on it that it seems as heavy as an iron mirror in all their hands.

“He seems…sweet.” Michaela says after a moment of contemplation. “But not by any means the kind of man I’d be disposed to marry.” She fans herself with an old box scrap, her posture still pristine even in the summer heat.

“I want to marry for love.” Laurel insists not for the first time today as she sets the frayed portrait aside next to her toast without really taking it in at all. “This is ridiculous we should all be able to marry for love.”

“What is ridiculous,” says a soft voice from behind the screened doors, “is that you still want to marry for love as if you’d learned nothing from Mr. Gibbins.”

Laurel glares up at the woman as she enters with the tired creek of the rust heavy hinges. “That is cruel.”

“That is a little harsh Miss Winterbottom,” Asher pipes up, but his face is blanketed by a quiet contentment that wasn’t there a moment before.

“No,” Wes finally agrees after a moment of tension, his finger lazily tracing the moisture from his tall glass, “she’s right. I don’t regret my choices, but Lady Keating is far wiser than we. And we have trusted her with our lives for many years-“

“Not out of choice,” Frank points out from the end of the table where he has been uncharacteristically quiet, “but he’s right. She’s worldlier, she understands these things.”

“Back to Miss Winterbottom’s point,” Asher interjects, “we haven’t had the best examples of love matches –“

“Mr. Millstone.” The entire table jumps at the sound of their mistress’s voice. She takes her place at the head of the table with a look of stony disdain at the conversation. “I expect more respect for Gibbins’ loss. Might I remind you that it is your loss also and that you should all be more mindful of your tongues.”

“I think we all mourn the loss of our…sister.” Connor amends, finally adding his thoughts to the discussion.  “I just agree that perhaps it is silly to put our valuable futures on the basket of emotion when there are more tactical elements to be considered.”

“Ice in the veins,” Frank mutters from behind his newspaper. But it is a tired phrase and no one takes note of the miniscule flinch in Connor’s posture or the snicker of ridicule in Frank’s tone.

She turns her piercing gaze on him. “Are you volunteering in this matter Mr. Walsh?”

Wes tilts his head in a familiar gesture of curiosity that made so many compare him to a newborn pup. “Is that really an option? Is he agreeable to a match with another man? It would mean leaving his home it would change the entire structure of the contract.”

“To our advantage,” Bonnie says in a calm realization.

Keating takes a drink of her coffee and leans away from the others at the table. “As it turns out in that household it matters very little if he agrees. His father has left that card on the table and if one of you three is agreeable then we should capitalize on it. Marrying off Miss Castillo or Miss Pratt would mean losing their talents to another family and I would not have it. I’d rather lose the land.”

“That’s touching,” Asher says in faintly condescending surprise.

Michaela scoffs into her tea. “That’s strategy.”

“I can’t say I’m agreeable,” Asher hastens to say after a moment, “…men just aren’t to my taste.”

“I think Wes should have been excused from this discussion from the start,” Laurel says with indignation, “it has scarcely been a year.”

Frank waves a dismissive hand from behind his paper, “Someday he must marry again.”

“Someday yes,” Laurel agrees, “but not yet. Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Oh very well,” Connor sighs loudly, “I’ll do it. It’s only a contract.”

“A contract that stipulates fealty.” Wes reminds him.

Connor rolls his eyes and picks at the bread on his plate. “And have we learned nothing in our upbringing about contracts and how to maneuver them?”

Laurel stares across the table in disbelief. “That is cruel Connor.”

“Yes cruelty is rampant in this table, “ Keating says with little patience, “but that is a matter for another time. Do we have an understanding Mr. Walsh? Once I speak to them there is not taking it back.”

“I understand completely.”

“Very well. The rest of you may all breathe easy.” She stirs a cube of sugar into her coffee and glances up at them. “I expect cheerful celebrations for your brother once the deal is struck.”

The rest of breakfast is a quiet affair, punctuated by the turns of Frank’s paper and the clatter of utensils.

“I can’t believe you would volunteer for a life of marriage,” Asher whispers as they leave the breakfast room.

“Oh everyone marries,” Connor says with a shrug, “it means little. Besides, he is a man – if he is not interested in men he’ll be glad not to have a wife to answer to for his indiscretions and if he is interested in men then we can entertain each other for a while and he won’t fault me when I step out.”

“I’ve defended the slivers of heart I’ve seen in you since we were children, Connor,” Laurel hisses as she catches up to them, “but every day you prove Frank right. You’re made of ice.”

“And this,” Connor reminds her motioning over himself, “I can make the world spin the other way round if I want.”

Wes slides up beside them in that moment and shakes his head. “You don’t really know what type of man he is, what if he isn’t honorable?”

“Well then it’ll be a good thing I’m not honorable in the least,” Connor sighs impatiently.

“I can see the kindness in his eyes,” Micheala says as she strides up calmly to fall in step with them. She passes the forgotten portrait to Connor. “I wager Connor will be the one to draw first blood.”

“Please, this isn’t a duel at sundown,” Laurel says in dismay, “there needn’t be any violence.”

Her words brought down the atmosphere of jest among them, or perhaps it was the painting, aged too quickly with the humid airs, that hung beside them – the one that was difficult to walk past.

“I’m sure,” Connor says, his voice subdued, “that everyone involved will survive. Now, Madame has asked us to be of good cheer once the deal is struck. Can we do that or will we have to rely on Millstone’s excessive enthusiasm.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be excessive if the rest of you weren’t such moody drags,” Asher says, digging his hands into his pockets. “Come now, it’s a wedding! It’ll be fun.”

Connor snorts softly, “See what I mean?”

“None of you are any fun,” Asher huffs. “And for the record, it is marriage, is it not? Someone is going to die.”

 

*-*-*-*

 

Oliver comes to himself at the strangeness of his surroundings. Is he outside? The smell of dirt and grass and wildflower is strong and the warm wet of earth on his palm it makes no sense. He finally startles awake to the sounds of chortling.

“Oh he lives!”

When Oliver jumps up there’s a clump of dirt and dying weeds clenched in his fist, his brothers gathered like a chorus of wild dogs around him.

He drops the earth onto the carpets and tries to clean off his hand on his sleepshirt, “What in the seven hells.”

“Smile Ollie,” Marcus says with a proud grin, “oh what a fetching bride you’ll make!”

Curtis can barely contain his laughter. “You make sure to talk to mama about your wifely duties, you hear?”

“Fitter for the wedding whites than any of our sisters,” adds Joshua, “isn’t he?”

Oliver takes a deep breath without meeting their eyes. “I take it you’ve heard.”

“Heard? You’re the legend of town! Look at the rest of our girls, married off to inconsequential men with measly lands and tired backs. And look at you! That woman’s ward! Could it be more exotic?”

Oliver concentrates on picking the dirt specks from his fingernails. “I’m not a girl.”

“Shhhh don’t let your groom hear that!”

“That’s enough.” Their father’s booming voice and the slam of the door startle them all to attention.

“Father,” Oliver bows his head, “I can handle a bit of jabbing.”

“Well I can’t abide it.” His father declares. “Out, the lot of you – I must speak to Oliver.”

Once his brothers file out of his room Oliver looks up at the man. “Yes, father?”

“Your brothers’ behavior,” he says as he looks back at the closed door, “it makes me wonder if you think this is a punishment.”

Oliver looks back down at his hand. “No, father.”

“I hope you understand we are doing what is best-‘

“For the family,” Oliver says quickly and softly, “I understand. The Keating woman is very influential, very wealthy.”

“But Oliver-“

“And it is one less burden on your shoulders.”

“Son,” his father says quietly as if speaking mostly to himself, “you are never a burden.”

“Of course not. I shouldn’t speak in such passions.” Oliver says calmly, finally meeting his father’s eyes. “You have always been a kind father and your wife… has been most gracious.”

“Treated you like a son of her own.”

“Yes, sir.” Oliver nods, averting his eyes over to the window, “Just like them.”

“Good. I’m glad we understand each other. Keating and her party will arrive by supper time, she is not a woman to waste time, that one.”

Oliver does not know what else to say and knows nothing else is required of him. With his last sister married it was time to send off the sons, and what best than to begin with him, too old and disenfranchised to find a suitable match on his own.

“I have heard she is a formidable woman,” Oliver finally says, when it seems his father is still waiting for an answer. That seems to be enough for him and he pats Oliver’s shoulder twice before heading down to breakfast. Oliver will take his meal with the servants as has always been his custom, for tonight they will have guests with them and the charade of a loving family must be extended to him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the slowest pace I've ever taken a fic, I hope you enjoy the slow torture.

Connor rides, despite the length of the journey. Asher teases him about an easy escape as he climbs onto the carriage with Madame Keating and the rest and Laurel, still seething at him saddles her own horse and rides beside him in tempestuous silence.

“You know I’m no monster,” he says after two hour’s ride. He keeps his voice soft to avoid Frank’s ears as he guides the carriage around a turn.

She glances at him with unabashed disdain before turning her eyes back to the lane in front of her.

“Look,” he says with a pleased smile as he reaches into his breast pocket, holding the reigns steady in his left hand. He holds up the small portrait. “He’s not too plain.”

“You’ve made up your mind to besmirch his good name and continue jumping into every bed in countryside and town.” She says with her gaze set before her. “I’ve nothing to speak of on the matter.”

“You think everyone is as soft hearted and sensible as you, Laurel,” Connor sighs, “Or as you pretend to be. But who do you think knows you best?”

“Myself,” she says, eyes still trained on the lane as she urges her horse to race up to the carriage which has long since left them trailing yards away.

Connor sighs and puts the tattered inked page back into the side pocket of his coat before racing after her. When he catches up Laurel has busied herself in conversation with Frank. Connor knocks on the carriage window as he keeps pace and is greeted by Michaela’s judgement. That morning she had enumerated exactly why it was a terrible idea for him to ride for five hours before meeting his soon to be betrothed. “Are you quite ready to admit how monumentally stupid it was for you to ride on your own?”

Connor snorts softly, “I’m enjoying quite the view, how goes the morning staring Asher between the eyes?”

“Comfortable,” she bites back, “and clean. You look foul.”

Connor rolls his eyes as he struggles to keep pace with the carriage, “Can I speak to Madame?”

“Another hour,” comes Keating’s voice from beside Asher, “you are the one who chose to ride.”

“Yes ma’am,” Connor says with a nod though she can’t see him. She can hear it well enough, this he knows. “But I was just wondering – not that I mind sacrificing my name and person at the altar of our household…what exactly do we want with this barren rocky coast?”

“All in good time,” she says from within with clear finality.

The land around them loses grass and gains boulders, the scent of sea salt overpowering them with every mile of road they gain.

By the time they reach the edges of the Hampton estate, Connor’s hair is matted in sea air and salt, his slacks dotted in mud and road. Laurel, the devil’s bride, looks impeccable.

“I pray the Hamptons allow us a moment to gather ourselves before they grace us with their presence,” Keating says as she looks him over, “or else I may be forced to hand over Mr. Millstone after all.”

-

Oliver is resolutely not hiding from his family, from Dottie, or from his dinner jacket. He’s just brushing Hyacinth as he always does after a ride. He should be asking for warm bath water instead of eying the water shed out here by the stables, because that will be iced and really – Dottie is sure to have that dinner jacket pressed.

He runs his fingers over the animal in soothing movements. “It’ll save her the trouble of carrying those hot buckets, won’t it boy?”

Hyacinth blinks without a sound, unimpressed by his false motives.

“Well excuse me for not being thrilled,” he mutters, “at the prospect of supper this evening. Unlike some of us I have more than fat flies and old carrots to be concerned about.”

The horse snorts out this time and Oliver leans his forehead against him. “I should be grateful, I know. Who needs love? I get to not die alone.”

“Is that a watershed?”

Oliver startles and jumps back from his animal to face the intruder, a mounted stranger plucked from the pages of the vilest of half cent paper trash, his hair wet and stuck with the sea air and his stunning face speckled in dust like an angel after battle.

“It… it isn’t readied.”

The stranger shakes out his jacket and tuts at himself, “Pity. Have you a river or a puddle that isn’t poisoned by all this blasted salt?”

“A…a creek. Half a mile east.”

“A half mile –,” the man curses profusely under his breath before folding his jacket over his arm and grabbing hold of the reigns of his beautiful brown horse, “my thanks. Anything will do well.” He moves in the direction Oliver sent him without much of a glance in his direction. Not that Oliver minds, of course, as long as he gets to watch the vision move away like a specter of his darkest dreams.

A glimpse of something white and clean in the damp ground catches Oliver’s eye and he only just stops himself from calling out to the stranger when he sees, bizarrely, his own image looking back at him. He holds the dirty portrait in his hand for a long while as a tight knot coils inside him. A stranger in possession of his picture could only be one man, a man who although familiar with his image has passed him by like so much gravel on the road. He straightens his back and sighs in defeat, his eyes turning to his only living companion with less hope than before. “So much for not dying alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeeeeed me, the comments are like cookies and don't you want to give me cookies???


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just hate Oliver's family in this fic okay? Am I allowed to say that even though I'm writing them?

Connor sits opposite his betrothed, a large spread of foreign fruits and succulent meat between them, and can’t shake the looming feeling that he has somehow without a direct word to him – already managed to make a mess of all of this. Perhaps it isn’t him, he figures, perhaps this man is displeased by the idea of marrying another man, perhaps he is not and has a lover he’ll be forced to leave behind. Or a mistress. Connor should ask, certainly Lady Keating wouldn’t mind they be brought along if everything was discreet. Perhaps he’s looking so furious about another matter entirely. Perhaps the duck in cherry sauce just isn’t sitting well with him. The most troubling part of all this is just that, this is troubling him. He can scarcely take a bite without glancing over at the man’s displeasure with the evening.

“Oliver is a very accomplished scholar,” Mr. Hampton points out from the head of the table.

“Yes,” his wife agrees, “though he did not attend school overseas as my boys did.”

Connor notes with some amusement that Mr. Hampton isn’t pleased by his wife’s disclaiming upon the education of his eldest.

“No, Oliver attended Carlton, like myself and my father before me,” Mr. Hampton says proudly, “and he excelled quite well.”

“By the standards of the time of course,” one of the brothers – Connor forgets which – says with a stupidly smug grin on his face.

“Quite,” another brother agrees, “who knows what it was like back then?”

At the head of the table, Mr. Hampton glares and at the other end Madame Keating watches the exchange with interest.

“I agree,” Oliver says from across the table from Connor, startling all of them. “I hardly see how my childhood education is relevant today.”

“You were in the choir at Carlton were you not?” Asher asks, in order to break some tension, “I’ve heard it’s quite a feat to be accepted to it.”

“Yes did you not train for weeks and weeks with Caroline, Oliver?” One of the eldest brothers says as he leans forward, “and after all that work you only made it to the choir’s reserve.”

“Oliver,” Michaela says with a pleasant smile, “I’ve read you are quite an accomplished rider.”

Connor does not have much of an opinion on his betrothed as of yet, but the way he blushes under praise is lovely to behold.

“I would not say accomplished is the correct –“ Oliver interrupts himself and smiles back at Michaela earnestly, “I do enjoy it, thank you.”

“Of course, Oliver has not ever displayed his skills at the races, the way my Edward has,” Mrs. Hampton adds, for no real apparent reason setting the entire table to silence once again.

“I apologize,” Oliver mutters after a moment as he stands, “I pray I be excused, I’m not feeling well. It has been a pleasure to meet you all, Lady Keating.” He nods towards Keating and all but runs out of the dining room, leaving his father to sigh and hang his head, his brothers to chuckle in the most unsubtle way and his stepmother to look unimpressed.

Connor turns his eyes briefly to Madame Keating until he receives a subtle nod from her and then turns to their hosts to excuse himself.

It takes him long enough to find Oliver that he begins to think he’s lost his way. He finds himself all the way outdoors before he makes out the shape of the man, reclined against a column and looking over the evening sights.

“Oliver?”

The man looks over his shoulder and then to the heavens as if asking for patience.

“I apologize for my behavior,” he says with practiced courtesy, “Mr. Walsh – I hope I’ve not offended your mistress.”

“My…oh,” Connor shakes his head, “my Lady. No I think she quite understands.”

“Forgive me,” Oliver says, blushing once again in that breathtaking shade, “I am not familiar with her title.”

“It’s a…. family idiosyncrasy. We were too old to call her mother when we came to her you see and Wes…his story books. It’s a silly story. Another time perhaps?”

Oliver nods and leans back onto the column once again, “Yes, of course.”

“Your family is quite – all families are …”

“There really is no need for this,” Oliver says, motioning between them, “I’ve asked repeatedly for the leave to take a small living of my own and be denied. I’ve asked to be excused from my household without need for any living and been refused. I left, without word and of my own volition for many years and now – I think this entire thing is a farce. You are obviously young and beautiful and can gain nothing from a penniless man with no land and a begrudged name.”

Connor stares in shock at a man he had assumed had trouble stringing together words. But there is nothing shy about the man’s exasperation nor any hesitancy in his words.

“I have nothing to gain,” Connor says once he has recovered and gathered himself, “nor anything to offer myself. I do not question my lady, it is not what we were brought up to do. We only have faith that she has our every happiness in mind."

"Happiness,” Oliver says incredulously, “your guardian settles you to marry a man ten years your senior for your own happiness?”

“I do not question my lady’s motives,” Connor says calmly, “though I cannot help question, do forgive me, why your own family would make such frankly feeble attempts to humiliate you when you have nothing but accomplishments to recommend you. I know these are the first words we exchange but I would mean for them to count for something, if we are to be married, my household would never treat you in such a way.”

Oliver snorts and turns his gaze away. “Is that a water shed?”

“Excuse me?”

“Those were your first words to me,” he clarifies, “I am not accustomed to dressing my best or wearing my spectacles when I ride. Nor do I expect to meet strangers asking where they could bathe.”

Connor blanches. “I … I did not…”

“That is why my brothers and my… father’s wife, have such a good time at humiliating me. I am easy to look over, easy to shake one’s head at. I do not need promises of a better life, from you Mr. Walsh. I’ve given up on the idea many years hence. Do excuse me.”

Oliver kicks away from the column and heads down the steps and into the darkness of the falling night, away from what Connor would assume, was the haven of his chambers and out into the unknown mist of the salty aired night.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment comments comments, they give me liiiiiife.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're kind of slightly heading in the direction of going somewhere!

“Up with the sun,” a soft deep voice says in his ear. It is familiar and welcoming, what he always imagined as a mother’s embrace. It would be no hardship to listen and to wake up, if only the sun were actually up.

“Dottie?” His voice is sleep rough and quiet in the darkness. “It isn’t dawn.”

The old woman hums and crosses her arms. “Up at all ours like a sprite last night, weren’t you Master Oliver?”

“I was not all up at hours,” he shakes the clouds from his mind, “up at all hours I mean. I was just clearing my head.”

“Aye that’s what your boy was doing last night also,” she says as she pulls a shirt from his armoire, “or so says Marguerite, who told Walter since – you know about them – who told the kitchen when he headed out for bread just now.”

“Well,” Oliver runs his palm over his face and tries to come fully awake, “as long as it has all been discreet.”

“Oh hush,” she says, waving him down, “you spoke harsh to the boy and now he’ll go and tell that you won’t be marrying him.”

“He’ll do no such thing,” Oliver sighs as he lets himself fall back onto the bed.

“Oh he will, Marguerite said as much.” She nods heavily. “Says he had no idea you were so reluctant, won’t marry someone against their will. Sounds plenty noble to if your ask me. Oh but you’re grown now, won’t listen to this old woman another moment.”

Oliver frowns in contemplation. “Do you really think he’ll tell Lady Keating?”

Dottie tuts, “Lady. What Lady is that? Marrying above her station and gathering stray souls like street cats.”

“Dottie,” he says as he climbs out of bed, “if he calls this off it’ll be all the worse.”

“Should’ve thought that before you ran your mouth, shouldn’t ya Little Shell?”

“I need to speak to him,” Oliver decides, taking the shirt Dottie offers without question.

“Aye, I thought so. S’why I’ve woken you before the rightful dawn.” She puts her hands on her hips and gives him that old menacing look. “Now you won’t be going out to shore after witching hour will you? You’re not listening to those tall tales in the kitchen now?”

He laughs as he buttons up and digs around for some trousers. “What gives you that idea?”

“You don’t sass me now boy.” She hisses as she grabs him by the ear. “I raised you to be God fearing, not to be listening to that nonsense those common folk like to talk about, you understand me?”

When she finally releases him he is blushing and chagrined as a child. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oliver,” she takes his face in her work roughed hands, “you listen good. Your mama was a child, vain and beautiful like a moon jewel. She cried and cried with you in her belly cause she thought she wasn’t pretty no more, and when you left her she left you. She was an unnatural woman, but that don’t mean she was any kinda siren. You promise me you keep that in your heart where it belong and you don’t go letting it in your mind.”

“Dottie, I never listened to those stories as a child, why on earth would I start now?” He kisses her forehead and checks his buttons before tying his trousers up. “Now I must go and find him before I truly ruin this.”

“Good.” She pats his shoulder and brushes at his hair, “I breathed easy when you was far from the sea and I’ll do so again when you leave.”

“So ready to be rid of me?”

“Aye,” she nods solemnly, “there’s no happiness for you here my sweet boy, not since you were born. Now go.”

-

“If you just take some time to speak with him –“

Connor groans and throws a pillow over his face, “Why are you here?”

“- then it’ll make everything go more smoothly. Unless you’ve changed your mind-“

“The sun isn’t here," he mutters into the soft down and fabric, "why are you here, Michaela?”

“-then Madame will be very very upset and we would all like to avoid that, but of course you can’t be forced to marry, it’s only after everything Madame has done for you –“

“Michaela." He growls. "Go. Away.”

A knock at the door actually startles him into sitting up and he turns wide eyed to see an equally alarmed Michaela staring back at him. They stare until there is another knock and they look down at themselves, remembering simultaneously that they are far from home and it may look unseemly for someone to see them conversing in bed, dressed only for sleep.

“Get out,” he whispers while shooing her off with his hands.

She glares but gathers herself and throws a robe at him on her way back to her own bedroom, which he catches swiftly and slips on without tying before hurrying to the door. Still he waits there until there is one single shy knock.

He blinks in bleary surprise when he finds Oliver standing there, dressed for the day but just barely.

“Uh…”

Oliver looks at him and Connor is more than awake enough to take in how appreciative Oliver’s gaze is, the way it lingers at the untied manner of his sleep shirt or where it ends above his knee. Oliver is more blush than skin when he finally meets his eyes again.

“My goodness, I’m sorry of course you were still – I’m so sorry to have woken you I’ll just…”

“It’s alright,” Connor assures him, smiling smug and proud of Oliver’s reaction to him. “I was very nearly awake. An annoying crow seemed to be crying out right beside my ear while I tried to sleep.”

Oliver smiles nervously and grabs for the back of his neck. “I wanted… I wanted to speak with you but if you’re…I mean I’ll let you get dressed…”

“Oh don’t bother,” Connor says, shoving his door open and motioning for him to enter, “that’ll take me an hour at least. Come in.”

Oliver looks more nervous with every passing moment, while Connor decides to take a seat by the cold dead hearth and wait.

“I… I wanted to apologize for my behavior ever since you’ve gotten here I – must have given you the impression that I was against this and I … it’s just…”

“It’s not an ideal situation,” Connor supplies, “is that what you mean?”

“I have… issues…with my family?”

Connor grins openly at that, “I hadn’t noticed.”

Oliver stares for a moment before laughing, open and startled. “I… I am not against the …the arrangement.”

Connor takes his own moment to look Oliver over. He truly is more than “not plain”, the turn of his smile and the tone of his skin more attractive than Connor had originally thought.

“You know,” Connor says after a few seconds, “there is no reason for this to be anything more than that. An arrangement. You’ll have a new home, yes, but nothing else would have to change. Certainly nothing between us, who are but strangers to each other.”

His frankness seems to shock Oliver but in passing before the other man nods. “Yes that… that would be alright with me if – if this was only a matter of …contracts.”

“Of course,” Connor smiles, crossing his legs casually. He amuses himself watching Oliver swallow a thickness in his throat. “Nothing but business.”

Oliver takes a steadying breath. “Good, yes. Well in that case – we should not delay the matter any longer.”

“Perfect,” Connor smiles and plays with apparent thoughtlessness with the hem of his sleep shirt, “what say you about week’s end? I am sure Madame would not like to be away for a longer stay.”

Oliver’s eyes are firmly stuck to Connor’s wandering hand, so much so he cannot see the dark set of victory in Connor’s own gaze.

“Yes,” he finally manages, his voice a bit breathy, “yes we can be married at week’s end. It…it sounds perfect.”

“Great,” Connor says, jumping to his feet. “Now if you don’t mind, I think bed is calling us both.”

Oliver opens and closes his mouth once, twice, and almost a third before he realizes he is being dismissed and not shockingly invited to stay.

“I – yes. I’m sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

“Oh that’s quite okay,” Connor says, his smile still satisfied, “home is a place of light sleep, that you’ll come to know.”

Oliver nods, a bit frantically, before taking a few steps back. “I … I’ll leave you to it then.”

“Good day, Oliver.”

“Yes,” Oliver swallows as he backs himself into the door and out of it, “yes, good day.”

When the door is shut behind him, Connor can hear the tell-tale creek of the side door to his left.

“Well,” Michaela says, half into her day’s dress and half out of it, “that’s that then?”

“Do be quiet,” he huffs as he climbs back into bed. “And go back to bed,” he huffs, “this hour is absurd and this place is madness.”

From the edge of his heaven-bound eyes he can see Michaela shake her head.

“You say that,” she says, heading back to her room once again, “as if home were sane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me dance and I am an excellent dancer, donate a comment to the dance fund!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOW WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE (but not like... quite there).

The morning of his wedding, Oliver contemplates taking to the sea. He figures, his future is just as uncertain joining Annalise Keating’s household as it would be finding himself out in the open sea. But there is a beautiful jacket ready for him and an elderly woman with a rolling pin hiding under her skirts outside his door so he doesn’t quite think he’ll make it very far at all. He wonders if she’s just read his mind when there’s a sharp knock at the door.

“Come in!”

“Well,” a familiarly melodic voice says quietly, “look at you.”

Oliver turns, not quite believing his eyes, “Caroline? What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

“Come Oliver,” she says, casting her eyes down, “I couldn’t very well miss your wedding.”

“Edward and Lisbeth won’t be gracing us with _their_ presence.” He says casually, still shocked at her arrival. “It…it’s good to see you.”

Caroline looks down at her skirt and pats it smooth around her. “Come now it’s just us –there’s no need for pretense.”

“It is,” he says earnestly as he reaches for her hand, “it is good to see you. Where is – you did bring her didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.” She nods with a tight smile. “She’s downstairs, with … her father.”

Oliver drops his sister’s hands and feels the falter in his smile. “Oh.”

“Oliver I couldn’t just…” she seems at a loss for words and in a panic to leave, “he is my husband.”

“I know that Caroline.” He says calmly, “Trust me I know.”

There is a moment of tense and heavy silence before she looks up at him with a cheerful look about her, “Well are you excited?”

“Yes.” Oliver nods, trying to smile for her once again. “Yes I’m very excited.”

“I hear the marshes are so lovely, so humid and hot but – but well, anything is better than this don’t you think?” She takes his hand in both of hers. “And I hear your, he’s quite handsome isn’t he?”

“He’s beautiful,” Oliver says with a rueful smile, “and ten years younger than me.”

“All the better,” she smiles gently, “come, your niece is anxious to see you.”

Downstairs, waiting in a lace and cotton dress with traces of mud more obvious on her soft leather boots is the queen of his tired heart.

He lowers onto his knees and throws his arms wide. “Princess Olive!”

“Oliol!” The little girl rushes on her clumsy toddler feet towards him, throwing herself squarely at his chest. It knocks the breath out of him, but he embraces her tightly and kisses the soft dark angel’s hair all the same.

“Look how tall you are, princess, you’ll tower over all of us soon.”

“Uncle Oliol look look,” she digs her pudgy hand into a hidden pocket in her skirts and pulls out, much to his amusement, a still alive and wriggling green tree lizard.

“OLIVE!” Caroline shrieks.

“Oh it’s alright, come on,” he says, petting the squirming thing in her hand, “she’s a young explorer. Aren’t you my queen? Where exactly did you find this specimen?”

“Was on the carriage wheel, Uncle Oliol,” she says, as excited as anyone could be, “it would’ve been squashed!”

“You’re very right, angel, an explorer and a savior of reptiles everywhere. We must fit you for a crown.”

“Now Ollie old boy, we don’t want to spoil her.” The words startle him out of his focus on the child. Oliver looks up at the man resting a hand at the small of his sister’s back, his hat still on his head as if he were just about to leave and a ridiculous moustache hanging gaudy over his lip.

“Well then it is a good thing it is my wedding day, Louis, which means Princess Olive will be spoiling _me_. We’ll make a crown of yellow bell lilies you and me. Won’t we?”

“Yes, yes, and you’ll wear it all day won’t you Oliol?”

“Of course I will, princess. Come on, we’ve only a few hours to look our best.”

“Oliver please don’t be late to your own wedding,” Caroline pleads.

“Especially on the child’s account,” Louis adds, too distracted by the motions of his own hand to spare a glance at them.

“If Olive bids me we postpone the wedding to search for fireflies then I most certainly will, Louis,” he snaps, “Aren’t we all lucky that is my prerogative.”

He takes up the girl in his arms and smiles gently at her, “Let’s go make that crown.”

-

When Connor finally slips out of Laurel’s fussing and Asher’s jibes he finds himself wandering out into the gardens, just to pass the time and ease his thoughts before he signs away at a marriage contract. It shouldn’t make him nervous, it isn’t like it truly means anything, but he can’t help the tight twist of his stomach since he woke. The land here is different, more rocks and gravel than anything else. But there are small patches of grass and this garden seems cultivated from foreign lush things that are thriving by the sea.

For all that he can hear it if he’s silent enough, he has no idea how to get to the shore from here – and he’s distracted by these thoughts until something barrels onto his leg and topples him.

“Who are you, are you a pirate? Are you a good pirate or a bad pirate? I want to be a good pirate when I grow up, so I can find treasure and have a parrot sit on my arm a big blue and green one, do you have a parrot?”

“I – “

The little …was it a girl? The child had soft looking dark hair braided through with bright orange blossoms and those clothes looked like they might be a dress beneath all the dirt and dust. The little girl was sitting squarely on his chest, still going at a terrifying pace until a shadow covered them both.

“I see you’ve met your future niece.”

The little girl and Connor both look up to find Oliver hardly trying to cover an amused smile. Connor finds himself in awe of the contrast of his dark eyes and the bright yellow petal cups that surround his head like a halo. He’s sure he’s never seen anything brighter and isn’t so sure why he isn’t blinded by it.

“You’re marrying a pirate?” The little girl says in utter shock with her tiny hands still pressed to Connor’s chest. “But mother said you’d marry a prince!”

 “A prince,” Connor finally says feigning complete dismay, “well, I didn’t know about that. Perhaps I’m not the best suitor.”

The little girl presses her tiny hands to either side of his face and presses, “No! A pirate is much better than a prince! Princes live in castles with big walls and no windows, but pirates live on ships!”

Oliver plucks the girl up into his arms and allows Connor to stand, his shirt already as muddy as her dress. “I’m sorry,” he mouths silently, to which Connor can only shake his head.

“I think we should both be getting ready,” Oliver says as the little girl becomes distracted by some insect on a leaf.

“Unless you have second thoughts,” Connor says, with a bit of teasing.

“No I’m quite certain now,” Oliver answers as he turns to look at the child.

“Good,” Connor takes Oliver’s hand, it’s warm to the touch – warmer than Connor ever is himself. He can see the surprise and the blush rising in Oliver’s cheek. He runs his thumb lightly over the back of Oliver’s hand, holding his gaze. “I will see you soon then.”

“Yes,” Oliver whispers back with a bit of awe.

“You should wear your crown to the ceremony,” Connor says with a quick grin as he dusts himself off, “it suits you well.”

-

Oliver makes it to the hall that afternoon in an absolute daze. He isn’t quite certain whether he’s made peace with it all, given up, or actually found himself looking forward to marrying a haughty handsome stranger.

The ceremony is small and outside the chapel by Oliver’s insistence. A chapel was no place to hold a business transaction. His father and stepmother stand to one side, three of his brothers, his sister and her family, and Dottie – in her Sunday best. On the other side stands Connor’s party, his benefactor Keating and his fellow wards, as well as the man and women who always inexplicably accompany them. Oliver knows the Walsh family is an old one and as far as anyone he’s asked can tell they are all in perfect health, but not one of them has been asked or expected to attend.

Connor is two steps behind him and in an awkward moment neither quite knows how to go about the whole thing. The magister clears his throat from behind his father’s oak desk and summons them forward.

It reads like a contract, with words unbefitting of business like loyalty and devotion scattered throughout. Connor’s face is impassive, only occasionally intent upon some phrase or word choice. Oliver can hardly look away.

“Connor Octavius Walsh, do you accept this man as your wedded spouse, to protect and hold in honor?”

“Yes,” Connor responds, his voice as calm as one who is agreeing to a morning meal. But a moment later he is looking at Oliver, directly at his eyes, as if he were one of those phrases or words that had so caught his attention previously. “Yes, I do.”

“And Oliver Diosdado Hampton, do you accept this man as your wedded spouse, to protect and hold in honor?”

“Yes,” Oliver says quickly, but his voice is shaky and embarrassing and weak, so he tries his best to keep his eyes on Connor’s hands and not his eyes when he speaks again. “Yes, I accept.”

“If I may take your signatures as an acknowledgement of these vows,” the magister says gravely as he pushes forward the paper before them.

Oliver signs without hesitation and finds himself hypnotized by the graceful movements of Connor’s hand over the paper.

“Now,” the man speaks, with the same monotone of boredom he’s held for nearly an hour, “with the power of the office I hold, I pronounce you lawfully espoused.”

Oliver has thought of this moment every night since they had first agreed. How did one commemorate a marriage such as this one? Would they hug? Shake hands as partners? In his wildest hours, Oliver contemplated resting a gentle kiss on Connor’s cheek as a sign of some affection at least, but never had he imagined Connor leaning forward and taking his face in both his hands. Never had he imagined the loud applause fading to a dull forgotten noise as his lips insisted upon his own, gentle and persuasive until Oliver responded in kind. He never imagined that he might even hallucinate the ghost of a warm wet tongue peaking mischievously at his lip before Connor pulled away just the slightest bit. “Your brothers seemed to expect a show,” he whispers, “thought we might as well give them one.”

This time it is Oliver who leans in, though his own kiss is not as searing and seeking as Connor’s, he still tries to convey – well he doesn’t know quite what he intends to convey, but it seems the meaning is well received when they come apart once again.

When Oliver remembers to look back at their gathered witnesses, he realizes his brothers are all equally shocked and delighted, his father seems pleasantly amused as does Caroline, while his stepmother and good old Louis appear as if a rotting creature had settled under their noses.

Connor takes his hand, pulling his thoughts away from them. “Come then, husband,” he says with a wide grin dipped in a dark shadow, “home awaits.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M NERVOUS ABOUT THIS CHAPTER please let me know how it went! Also would y'all benefit from character sheets for the OCs? I could try and make some without spoilers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *snickers*

Home is always sweltering but a holiday in the sea breeze makes it feel even more like a parlor room to a mild level of hell. Oliver rides beside him, rides like a master, and dodges any sort of depth in conversation as if he were fencing. Laurel rides ahead, with that speed he’s always thought she can’t quite control, and Frank throws them glances every so often that range from the lewd to the mocking.

“It broke my heart to see you say goodbye to your niece,” Michaela says, her arms resting on the carriage window, “you must adore her.”

“I do,” Oliver says with a gentle smile, “she is very much my most favorite person.”

“Looks like you have your work cut out for you, Connor” Wes says to him, as he leans in beside Michaela, “I can’t quite see you competing with a toddler.”

“Is that so,” Lady Keating’s voice emerges from within, slightly tinted with amusement, “I find it the easiest thing to imagine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of competing with Princess Olive,” he says with a wink that makes Oliver avert his gaze, “I certainly would be no match for her.”

“Your sister must be very fond of you,” Asher notes, half out of the other side of the carriage before he is being tugged back inside.

“You mean because of Olive’s name,” Oliver guesses.

“I’ve never known a child named after their uncle,” Wes notes, bouncing along with a bump on the road, “but I guess I don’t know many children.”

“We were very close,” Oliver says, but for the first time his tone is clipped and doesn’t encourage the subject.

They set out right after the ceremony and at the time it didn’t seem to him anything other than convenient that the Hampton family goodbyes were short and unsentimental. In fact the only embrace that seemed honest and tender was the one between Oliver and his tiny niece, though he does recall a meaningful look and some whispered words between the girl’s mother and his husband. His husband. That word would be disconcerting for some time to come.

“Frank,” Lady Keating calls out after another half hour of road, “go to the Hartford – we’ll stop for the night.”

“But we’re only two hours –“

Keating doesn’t let the protest end, “I said go to the Hartford, Frank.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The Hartford was an inn, the only establishment of the sort between the Hampton estate and home. Frank is right, of course, it would scarcely be nightfall by the time they reached the house if they kept going now, but there was no point in questioning her once she’d made up her mind.

It’s amusing to watch Oliver watch the others as they emerge from the carriage. All the women have left their shawls and Michaela helps Laurel raise her hair in pins to ward off the heat. Madame and Bonnie had long since taken care of that nuisance by cutting their own locks to boyish lengths, but Laurel and Michaela still held some attachment to their long hair. Asher and Wes had probably long since loosened their collars in the heat of the car and the sight of them made that enticing embarrassment in Oliver’s face even more evident. Not to be outdone Connor loosens his own collar and grabs the lapels of Oliver’s riding jacket before he can protest.

“If you spend one more minute dressed as you are you’ll very probably faint.” He says as he helps Oliver out of his jacket. “You’ll soon find out the heat is why we don’t stand on ceremony, it’s too hot to dress properly and wait for much of anything. You’ll get used to it.”

He watches Madame and Frank go into Hartford leaving Asher and Wes to fend with the luggage. He is only very mildly tempted to help them, but he can be excused for wanting to stay close to Oliver can’t he?

Oliver licks his lips in a nervous gesture that should touch his heart, but only makes his mouth water. “I was beginning to notice. It…is not a dry heat.”

“Dry?” Connor laughs as he folds Oliver’s jacket over his arm. “No, it’s oppressive, it seeps in through your clothes and into your skin. But I promise, you will get used to it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Oliver says, voice softer as he watches Connor remove his own jacket and stow it away in the carriage.

Lady Keating emerges with Frank and the others gather around as she gives one key to Bonnie, another to Frank, and extends the third to Connor with one of her heavy smiles. “I can hardly ask the newlyweds to bunk with the others on their wedding night.” She raises one eyebrow at him, “Consider it a gift.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you,” he says with an incredulous smile of his own as he accepts the key.

-

Oliver isn’t nervous, not even a bit. There’s nothing to be nervous about in sharing a bedroom. He’s done it a lot of times. There were no private rooms at Carlton and sometimes he shared a bunk with Edward when they were boys and his father decided to take them hunting. Classmates, brothers, husbands – what could be different? Nothing between them, because this was an arrangement. A very mature, cut, and dry contract.

Contracts are unaffected by beautiful men peeling off their shirts and throwing open windows. “Oliver,” he says as he leans on the window sill and calls to him over his shoulder, “come look. You can see the property from here.”

Oliver swallows through his parched throat and goes to see, tries to focus on the point off in the distance were a windmill stands tall and not on the gracefully muscled arm pointing towards it. He tries to recall the fine print of the contract. A thousand silver pieces a year for five years, stock on a third of Keating’s cattle, the other duller components of his price. What Oliver couldn’t understand was why Keating would bother, why he out of all his more accomplished brothers was chosen, how Connor ever agreed.

“Are you homesick?”

“Not the slightest bit,” Oliver answers honestly. Connor doesn’t emanate warmth, even in the late afternoon heat there’s a coolness being near him – Oliver only wishes he could feel it against his skin.

“Are you hungry?”

Oliver shakes his head, not trusting his voice to hold steady.

Connor looks down over Oliver’s clothes, every part of them save for his jacket still in place. Sunset shouldn’t be this breath-robbing heat. It should be cool and turning to chill – but the oranges and reds of the setting sun seem to spread the overwhelming temperature and Oliver knows, if he just touches Connor he’ll find relief. Connor, who is too close to him and missing his shirt. “Are you sure?”

Then Connor has a hand on his waist and through the cotton he can feel that he’s more than correct, Connor’s skin is a cool and steady relief from the heat and now he only wants more of it on him. Connor’s other hand reaches up to his over-heated cheeks. “If I remember correctly I made some promises about providing for you,” Connor says with a wicked smile, “isn’t there anything you need?”

“I thought-“Oliver’s voice nearly cracks until he takes a breath and tries again, “You said it’s only an arrangement.

“There’s no reason this can’t be part of that arrangement,” Connor says with his eyes on Oliver’s lips. Oliver knows because he can’t stop following the other man’s gaze.

“I thought all you wanted from me was my name,” Oliver manages to say, his lower back pressed to the window the heat of the setting sun at his back and the cool river of Connor’s body bracketed before him.

“I did,” Connor says with his lips already ghosting over the skin of Oliver’s neck, “but I want this too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go on, tell me how you really feel.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is what I call a transition chapter, I'm setting some stuff up? But it's going to pick up pace right after this you have my word. Also worry not because Connor is a teasing little shit in this.

Oliver is not inexperienced, not matter how much his brothers think so. He remembers how they used to elbow him whenever young ladies came to the house or when they passed them at a market, the way they snickered and chuckled about Oliver the 17 – the 23 – the 27 year old virgin. Because none of them knew about the fisherman’s son under the pier when he was 15 years old or their father’s accountant when he was 19 or – well, anyone else.

But Oliver had never had a lover like Connor, never had someone take so much pleasure in anything outside of what the simplest logic would dictate. He never had someone use their tongue so creatively or map every inch of too hot skin with their cool teasing lips. He had especially never had anyone talk to them while they – did anything at all. Grunting their own pleasure, maybe, or cursing crudely – but he’d never had anyone hold him close to his chest and whisper in his ear. He’d certainly never been with anyone who looked as angelic as Connor did, sleeping beside him with a pillow hugged tight.

The morning is a hectic one, Connor jumping awake and cursing softly about the late hour even though it is scarcely eight. They dress quickly with nothing but a quick squeeze of his shoulder and mumbled good morning, and rush down stairs with Connor’s hair still wet. The group was already dressed and sitting at breakfast, most of the food gone by then.

“Saved you some toast,” Laurel says to Connor, but she holds a piece of warm sweetbread out to Oliver with a wink.

Connor takes the dry toast from Laurel’s plate with a squinting glare. “How fickle you are.”

“You’ll both need your energy if you’re going to ride home this morning,” Asher whispers none too subtly, “after the night you both had, huh?”

“Asher,” Michaela snaps while Wes chuckles into his cup of coffee, “could you be a little less crass?”

“Do keep the obscenity to a minimum Mr. Millstone,” Lady Keating says as she takes her seat at the head of the table and picks up a cup of coffee for herself. “And I hope you all are well rested, we’ve been away too long and we’ve much to do today. Bonnie?”

Bonnie appears like a shadow beside Keating and holds a small leather-bound book open in her hands. “Jackson Umbridge needs to see us immediately about a boundary dispute that ended in the theft of some family antiques. Then we’ll have to see the Smithsons about their cattle poisoning, and the Carmichaels about their dead farm-hand.”

Oliver sits in a petrified state, partly confused but mostly horrified by the breakfast conversation on the topic of animal poisoning and employee murder.

“It was the nephew,” Frank says with a derisive snort as he approaches the table, “and we’re all set to leave.”

“Which one do you think was the nephew,” Keating says as she plucks a strawberry from a plate and makes no move to stand.

“The farm-hand,” he shrugs, “though I wouldn’t be surprised about the dead cows either. That kid is a hellstone.”

Keating nods as she drinks from her coffee. “Well it doesn’t matter what we know if we can’t prove it. Miss Castillo and Wes will look into the antique theft, Umbridge is a prickly man he won’t take well to anyone else. Miss Pratt, you’ll accompany Frank and Mr. Millstone to the Smithsons, get your hands dirty. Mr. Walsh and Bonnie will look into the farm hand. Mr. Hampton.”

Oliver tries to look as casual as possible as he across the table at her. “Do feel free to take the day to explore the house today, I’m sure Mr. Walsh will bring you up speed.”

With that she finally rises from her seat and the rest of the table follows suit, chairs scraping across the floor.

Connor, to his benefit, looks a bit embarrassed underneath all that amusment. “I guess you aren’t very sure what you’ve just walked into are you?”

“That would be an understatement,” Oliver hisses under his breath.

Connor has the gall to laugh and lean close to him, in a matter most inappropriate for such a public place – married or not.

“Come ride beside me again,” he says quiet and hot against his ear, “I’ll explain everything.”

-

They are almost to the property by the time Oliver finally understands. “So many people came to her that you decided to make it… a proper business.”

“There isn’t that much money exchanged,” Connor shrugs, “she doesn’t need it. Doesn’t do much with what she has – or at least not much we can see. But it does gain her many friends, who in turn come to be useful with the enemies she picks up along the way. It’s a complicated business.”

“Is that why she took all of you in? Because you have skills that help her?”

Connor shrugs again, looking forward towards the house coming up before them. “Who could know why she does anything?”

Oliver lets that thought settle as he takes in the facade of his new home. The house is certainly large, varnished in a white paint that peels and wears in places. There aren’t trees or gardens to speak of on the property, only grass- grass everywhere.

He’s captivated by the house, it almost seems a living thing to him. He must be staring at it like a fool when Connor approaches him.

“Will you be alright? I shouldn’t be too long, Bonnie is very… efficient with these things.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assures him, “are you sure – is it safe? What you do?”

But Connor doesn’t answer that, he only tucks finger under Oliver’s chin and hooks his thumb up to Oliver’s lip. He brushes the pad of his thumb idly over it making Oliver’s face heat up at the thought of everyone still milling about around them, coming in and out of the house and walking around them. But Connor doesn’t seem to mind them and the focus in his eyes makes the rest of the scene melt away around them. He kisses him, quick and dizzying before pulling away and grinning at him, “Safe as houses. I’ll be back before long. Don’t get lost in there.”

Oliver looks up to the house once again and can’t help feeling intimidated by it, especially once he watches everyone ride and drive away leaving him alone with the beast of a house and an impassive Annalise Keating standing at the gate.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who stuck with one point of view the entire chapter? THIS CHICK. I have to say I did not know this was where these two were taking it tonight - we are officially on "the characters are in charge" territory. Heaven help me!

Following Annalise Keating into her home with a small case of his belongings is surreal enough, but once inside Oliver felt as if an inexplicable wind swept through the front door and ran out, as if he’d released some held breath from within with his entrance.

She apologizes for not giving him a tour, mentions something about a meeting at noon and directs him to a room, third floor second on the left. Oliver nods and dusts off his voice, tamps down on the inexplicable thrill in his chest. “Thank you Mrs. Keating.”

She gives him a bit of a rueful smile. “We’ll have to find something for you to call me. Get settled, Mr. Hampton.”

He takes a breath and starts upstairs, taking in the paintings – Keating and her late husband, the man’s ancestors in their antiquated dress, and near the middle of the hallway the portrait of a girl just about the age of the others in the house. She looks furious and beautiful, her hair so dark it resembles black ink – if Oliver didn’t know any better he’d feel that the portrait was offended by him.

The third floor is a series of doors, most probably bedrooms, and Oliver doesn’t let himself explore any further than the room Keating had indicated.

It’s as simple as the rest of the house, tidy and filled with pieces of dark redwood. But for all its tidiness the room is dotted by columns of books; Plato and Ethics of Law, untouched Abridged Code of Magistrates and well-worn Dostoyevsky. A picture of a family hanging beside a mirror, a penny portrait of the sort some townsfolk procured in regional fairs. They all look unequivocally happy, from the man standing behind the smiling woman, to the obviously laughing boy and girl on her lap. Oliver finds himself captivated by the image, can hardly remember when he has seen anyone so content.

He pushes open a window to let some air in and loses his breath at the sight. The grass seems to go on forever, a sea of muted green interrupted by a river of brown road. A flash of bright orange catches his attention, but when he snaps his eyes to it the miniscule vision across the dirt road is gone. He must be more exhausted than he thought.  

It is all so different from the wide open apartments of his father’s home that more than anything Oliver feels relief. The heat is still immense and he sees no harm in ridding himself of his shirt for a short while. The bed is surprisingly cool and the quilt feels soft against his skin. No harm in closing his eyes to the midday sun, either, not when there isn’t anyone else at home and he’s meant to stay out of the way. The pillow smells of Connor, the distinct scent of his hair which Oliver is surprised to recognize after only a day. He only means to rest his eyes for a moment, but when he wakes the room is in afternoon shadow.

“I could become used to coming back to such a sight,” Connor says with one particularly lewd looking smile. “I see you’ve gotten cozy.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver fumbles for his shirt but sees it hung right by the door. “I only wanted to – I mean, I – Mrs. Keating said I should.”

“First of all,” Connor says as he leans a knee to the end of the mattress, “you must call her something else. And second of all I’m not inclined to kick you out of my bed.”

Oliver feels the blood and heat rising up his chest and neck all the way to his cheeks. “You aren’t?”

Connor raises an eyebrow and leans further onto the bed. “Did you not have a good time last night?”

“I – I thought it was a one-time thing I thought, perhaps you felt…”

“Obliged?” Connor shakes his head with a cut off snort. “This isn’t a matter where I allow obligation to have a hand. Tell me Oliver, was last night everything you ever wanted from a wedding night?”

Oliver tries to swallow through the lump in his throat. “More than that.”

Connor’s smile reminds him of the rocks that stood sentinel against the sea back home, the way they stopped and crushed the ocean waves. “Then that’s all that matters isn’t it?”

He should say something, ask something, and plead with Connor not to toy with him any further. But when the other man makes short work of removing his own shirt and climbs onto the bed, Oliver quite forgets himself. Forgets everything but the single fingertip trailing down the side of his body.

“You’re very warm, Oliver,” Connor whispers. His hand retakes the path his fingertip had first trailed, open palmed and cool against his skin before skimming the clasp of his trousers.

“Do you often,” Oliver starts once he gains control of his breathing, “do you often do this before sunset?”

Connor grins. “I do like to see what I’m doing, why? Suddenly shy?”

Oliver shakes his head. “I’m only…oh.” Connor chuckles as he places another distracting kiss to the ticklish bit of Oliver’s side. “I’m only trying to gain some idea of you.”

“I have plenty of ideas,” Connor says casually as he makes quick work of Oliver’s belt, “which would you like?”

“We should talk.” Oliver manages to whine half-heartedly.

“Talk is cheap.”

“I don’t know who you,” Oliver gasps, Connor’s devilish fingers having snuck to their destination, “ah –“

“That’s who I am.” Connor says, soft and fierce into his ear. “Someone who can make you feel like that. What more is there than that? Now stop running in your own mind and join me here.”

Oliver takes another halted breath and brings his hand to the man’s shoulder as Connor tightens his grip and tugs at a maddeningly slow pace. “Yes right there.”

Connor looks thoroughly impressed with himself. “Is that it?”

“Connor,” Oliver breathes out, his cheeks hot with embarrassment and pleasure, “please.”

Connor leans in close, his impossibly cool body pressing to Oliver’s heated one and causing his skin to ripple with the sensation. “That’s what I like to hear.”

 Oliver doesn’t find enough spare thoughts for anything other than grasping Connor closer. He thinks perhaps he digs his nails with too much fervor into the other man’s back, but it only seems to encourage him. Oliver reaches out to return Connor’s touch and finds that the other man is even more sensitive than he, a trigger touch that has him making the most obscene whispers into Oliver’s ear.  Some part of him, of course, knows there is something about this place and that this man may never love him and that there is much being hidden from him. But those parts are quiet in the face of Connor’s eyes, looking into his more intensely than any man who ever claimed to hold tender feelings for him as he gasps and comes apart.

Oliver can barely breathe at the sight, his closed eyes and open mouth, the way he remains relentless in his pursuit to bring Oliver over the edge as well.

“That’s it,” Connor encourages against his lips, “don’t hold back darling.”

It must be the endearment that undoes him or the fervent determination in Connor’s gaze or the deep orange light of the setting sun turning his skin to rose gold, it must be one of these or all of these, but Oliver throws his head back and relinquishes himself to Connor’s touch.

“Welcome home,” Connor says with no small measure of amusement once Oliver is come back to himself. He is leaning casually against a collection of pillows, a book pulled open atop his knee.

Oliver has no idea what to say, where to begin when words are deemed appropriate again. “Is that your family? Your real family? In the picture?”

Connor tilts his head, his eyes snapping to the picture on his wall before he gives a cautious nod.

“You look very different,” Oliver notes, daring to trail his idle fingers over Connor’s chest.

“I’m not in it,” Connor observes.

“I thought the little boy –“

“My nephew,” Connor shrugs, “the picture is only a couple of weeks old. My niece and nephew, my sister Gemma and her husband Eric. He’s a good man, Eric.”

“They look very happy. I’m sorry I thought it was an old picture of – well – your family.”

“Well it isn’t old at all,” Connor shrugs.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver finds himself gnawing at his lip, “I shouldn’t have been looking through your things.”

Connor looks down at him and hooks his finger under Oliver’s chin once again. “You’re a curious one aren’t you?”

Oliver licks his lips and gives a halfhearted shrug.

Connor leans in close, his lips ghosting over Oliver’s, “Better be careful then. Curiosity is as safe as undercurrents, haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve never heard that particular phrase,” Oliver admits, distracted by the heat of Connor’s mouth – the only part of him seemingly capable of retaining heat.

Connor kisses him, nearly knocking the thoughts right out of his brain. “Welcome to the marshlands, husband, we have a million adages and listen to none of them.”

He pulls away and stands just as quickly as he had first climbed into bed, grabbing a fresh shirt and giving a quick comb to his hair. “You should come eat something, everyone will be home soon.” Oliver watches as Connor walks out the door, as quietly and quickly as he came. A quiet part of him speaks louder as he watches Connor leave, reminds him there is something about this place, that this man may never love him, and that there is too much being hidden from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are like the salt of fanfiction, it'll fix anything.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AT LAST, I'm so sorry for the delay, I was blocked a couple of days!

Connor is the last one to breakfast, all but three chairs unoccupied. He takes his usual seat and shakes the last of sleep from his head.

Wes looks up from some crossword and raises his eyebrows at him. “Rough night?”

Michaela smiles with little joy at him, “Must have been the strangeness of someone staying the night. You know, the entire night.”

“As the only one here with the good fortune of sleeping directly below Connor’s room,” Asher says with that slightly lewd tone of his, “I can say with some certainty that it was a rough night indeed.”

Laurel ignores him Asher and leans forward towards Connor. “Where is Oliver?”

Connor shrugs. “Still asleep.”

“He might have liked to join us for breakfast,” she chides.

Connor glares. “You’re right, we’re a positive delight at this hour.”

As he reaches over the empty seat beside him for the sugar bowl he mutters, “Excuse me Rebecca.” It gets him a glare from Bonnie and a quiet chuckle from Frank, but Wes only shakes his head and scribbles away at his puzzle.  He sits back with a pleased smile, careful not to disturb the full cup of coffee sitting in front of the empty seat.

“I think I’ll ask Oliver to come to town with me,” Michaela says after a moment, “if Madame doesn’t have anything for us today.”

Laurel reaches for an apple and turns to Michaela as if suddenly remembering. “What happened to your case?”

“It was simple. Dirty, but simple. Just the neighbor settling a score. But it could have endangered the family. Water is water and having tampered with the cattle’s supply could have killed the occupants of the house and those surrounding.”

Asher chews on his toast and doesn’t bother to swallow before asking, “And you’re not going to try to prove that was the intent?”

“That isn’t what was asked of me.” Michaela says without hesitation.

“It’s that lack of creativity that’s dragging you down,” Frank warns from behind his newspaper.

“We can try to find some evidence to support it,” Wes suggests, his eyes still intent on the questions before him, “it isn’t too late to present it to the council.”

Michaela nods. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

“Must have been all the excitement about your favorite brother’s wedding.” Connor says, his words reeking of sarcasm.

“Yes,” she says in kind, “that must have been.”

Connor jumps when a voice speaks softly behind him. “Good morning.”

“Oliver!” Laurel is all grins today, “Good morning, I thought you’d miss breakfast.”

Oliver apologizes rather intently for someone who has made it down a bit late for breakfast. “I wasn’t used to… the bedroom faces West.”

“Of course, have a…”

Laurel and Michaela look at each other with brief panic while Asher winces visibly. Oliver takes a step back from the seat beside Connor’s. “Is something wrong?”

Just then Wes looks up from his papers and takes in the scene. “Oh for heaven’s sake.” He reaches over to retrieve the cup set before the empty seat and place it beside his own. “Have a seat Oliver, forgive them, they think I’m a madman.”

Oliver looks at the chair as if it is suddenly covered in spikes. Connor wants nothing more than to roll his eyes and explain the whole ridiculous thing. “I can have breakfast in the kitchen…”

He balks up at Oliver, surely he doesn’t think he’ll be reduced to nothing more than a servant. Surely he doesn’t think so lowly of him.  “Sit, Oliver. Have some tea. Or do you prefer coffee?”

Oliver looks unsure but sits nonetheless. “I’ll take either.”

“How diplomatic,” Laurel says with a smile. “I’ll get you a fresh cup.”

Oliver leans over while the others occupy themselves with their morning routines once more. “Have I overstepped?”

“God no,” Connor lays his hand over Oliver’s and finds a small pleasure in the way Oliver’s expression lightens. “It’s a silly custom, we’d do well to be rid of it. Try the sweetbread, Bonnie bought it especially for you.”

Bonnie looks up, as if the whisper had been loud and clear. She raises an eyebrow that speaks clearly, she did nothing of the sort, but she doesn’t say a word.

“I’ll never figure this blasted 7 across,” Wes mutters.

“Haven’t you something more useful to occupy your time,” Frank says with a derisive snort.

“What’s the clue,” Laurel asks, ever helpful.

Wes sighs, “Popularized by Liber Abaci, sequentially. Begins with –“

“F,” Oliver says with a pleased smile, “Fibonacci. It refers to the Fibonacci sequence…in mathematics.”

Connor turns to him, amused and impressed, “Just got the off the top of your head?”

Oliver casts his eyes down in embarrassment, as peculiarly tempting as ever, “It’s just a hobby.”

Connor wants to prod further, but just then Wes leans over to shake Oliver’s hand, quite delighted to finish his entire crossword in pen.

-

Connor loses track of Oliver, but he doesn’t give it much thought. He buries himself in the study and reads tome upon tome to help find some answer for his current case. It’s the first time Madame has assigned him a probable murder with only Bonnie to supervise.

The other farm hand, the one that’s still living – he wouldn’t say a word to Bonnie and wouldn’t get his eyes off Connor. It would be easy and it could give him the whole story. It would certainly save him the endless hours brainstorming and researching possibilities. Connor sets the heavy book in his hand down on the oak wood desk and looks with wary consideration out the window. There is Oliver then, walking arm in arm with Michaela.

He can’t very well see the other man’s expression, but his shoulders are relaxed and his pace easy as the two of them walk over the solitary trail towards town. He realizes then, he’s hesitating. Hesitating the easiest and quickest way to gain information and win this case. And for what? A man he’s hardly met? A marriage of convenience? It doesn’t make sense. For the time being, however, he takes the book in hand again. He turns away from the window and tries not to wonder what Michaela might be telling him.

-

Michaela has an iron grip on his arm and Oliver is grateful. The trail looks clear and precise, especially from up in the highest floor of the house, but it seems as if he is walking a maze of endless grass now that he walks through it.

“You seem to be settling well,” Michaela notes with a pleasant smile, “I never considered how odd things must be for someone who isn’t used to … well our household.”

Oliver knows exactly what she means and yet he knows nothing at all. He knows she refers to their odd line of work, to the fact that every member of the household is a detective, an investigator, an advocate for victims and denouncer of the wicked. But she is likely also referring to the fact that Laurel and Asher have a disdain for wearing shoes about the house, that she herself only picks up her hair when she is headed to town, that the house keeps a Cook but the mythical character only shows up to produce dinner every once in a while, and that for all its glory the house creaks and moans at night as if singing out every year of its existence.

“It’s not an unwelcome change,” he says, if only for something to say. He doesn’t know anything of her character, nor of anyone’s in the house. Not even his husband. “I was wondering… that is. I was told the Walsh family they’re all –“

“Alive and well?” She nods. “They are. Yes.”

“What kept them from the ceremony?”

“Oh,” she lays a hand over his arm and waves the other, “I hardly think they knew about it. Perhaps by now word has reached them.”

“I don’t understand.”

Michaela looks over her shoulder at the vacant trail behind them. “I think you should understand, you should be told these things. See Connor he doesn’t really speak to his family. To his mother and father that is. It all happened many years ago.”

“What all happened?”

“Well,” she whispers out of habit, “he disowned them.”

“ _He_ disowned _them_? He…his parents?”

“He felt, in all his thirteen year old wisdom, that his mother and father had wronged his sister. And well, if Connor’s… particular emotions extend to anyone then it is to his sister. He dotes on her. And well, he decided if she was so badly wronged by them then they had no right to call him a son. So he left, with his grandfather’s ring and his father’s only chance at grandchild bearing his name.”

“How did he come to be here?”

“Lady Keating heard what he had done, I think – well it was before I came here myself, but I think she thought him noble. Well, not to speak ill of your spouse but – we’ve hardly seen evidence of such nobility since then.”

Oliver doesn’t know what to say to that so he says nothing at all. He takes in the new scent of the air, the sound of the grass when a rare wind takes it, and the relentless heat of the sun.

“I’m sorry,” she says after a moment, “I don’t mean to say… I only mean you are just as much our brother now. So I am inclined to let you know that, well that Connor is a very charming man and he is a very popular man…”

“I should not expect loyalty,” he says quietly, “is that what you are trying to say?”

“I do not think he has ever had the opportunity to try.” She corrects herself.

“I think I will trust that given the opportunity he will not find it too difficult,” Oliver says, trying to convince himself of the fact. He might have not before, but the two previous nights with Connor have taught him to hope, perhaps he was wrong about his intentions.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Michaela says, her smile tight and her grip on his arm slightly slackened, “I’m sure you will be very happy with him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments keep me going!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS A FLASHBACK CHAPTER TO FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE START OF THE FIC, DON'T GET CONFUDDLED!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS. IS. A. FLASHBACK. (4 years previously).

**FOUR YEARS AGO**

“I’m sure you will be very happy with him.”

Oliver tries to stand as tall as he can as his tutor pushes him forward towards the dower looking business man.

“Well if he is as good at this as you say he is I’m sure I will be pleased,” the man declares while waving for someone to come over. A tall man appears beside him, just about Oliver’s age but all the better for it. He holds his hair tied back with ribbons of dark green silk and smiles with his eyes.

“Yes, Mr. Tatchet?”

“Show this man the tablet that I’ve been having all those fools look over. See if he can make heads or tails of it.”

“Yes, Mr. Tatchet,” the man says with a placating smile. He motions for Oliver to follow him and he does, without protest.

They walk down a narrow hallway, the man keeping stride right by his side. “You must be quite an expert in your field.”

Oliver struggles to find his tongue, the man’s eyes match the dark green of his ribbon. “I have studied under many masters of cryptology and language.”

“A wide view is the best view,” the man says proudly, “that is what Mr. Tatchet likes to say about all of these pieces of ancient nonsense. He thinks, I believe, that if he gathers all the knowledge he can it’ll make his life a little more worth living. A good woman is what he’s always been missing. Or a talented man.”

Oliver can’t help the hot rush of blood on the back of his neck, it is sure to reach his face. “I think it is a very worthy pursuit, to seek knowledge.”

The man shrugs, “I suppose if you have the disposition. My name is Quarry, Louis Quarry.”

“Do forgive me.” He extends his hand for a quick shake. “I’m Oliver.”

“You’ve no last name, Oliver?”

“None of any consequence this far from home.”

-

Figuring the contents of the tablets takes two weeks, but falling in love with Louis takes three. All in all, Oliver presents his result to Mr. Tatchet within a month and Louis presents his resignation along with it.

“You are very good at decrypting text Mr. Hampton,” Tatchet says as he looks over the papers. “Quite terrible at decrypting people I’m afraid.” Oliver pays no mind to the way Tatchet looks at Louis’ retreating back and shakes his head. He has no mind to pay, the way his is fevered with love for Louis.

Tatchet pays him the agreed upon amount and a handsome bonus for as he calls it, the elegance of his work. “You will need every penny, I do foresee. Godspeed, Mr. Hampton.”

“Just Oliver sir,” he insists, “just plain Oliver for me.”

-

Oliver takes odd jobs in odd parts of the world. When he strays too far from the coast his nights are restless, but his days are filled with calm. And who needs restful nights with a man like Louis in his bed? Every day he wakes up with the warmth of him and the memory of crashing waves fades as quickly as the sun rises.

Sometimes Oliver takes jobs of translation, simple Russian to English or Arabic to French. Sometimes he decrypts old messages of no more consequence than historical curiosity, sometimes his talents spill secrets that make his hands shake. Those are the worst, but the pay most handsomely and ease the lines of panic from Louis’ face when the coffers look modest so he does them and does them well.

-

Louis always has a new pet name for him, Oliver knows, because he forgets what name he’d chosen the week before. Sunbeam, sweetheart, love. Louis is forgetful, it helps with his happy disposition. He forgets he was keeping a tab and doesn’t settle it before they set sail, he forgets the keys to their rooms and stands at the window singing for Oliver to open for him instead, he forgets that Oliver loves him and kisses other men when he’s been too bored all day. But Oliver knows it is not malicious, he knows his work consumes him while he is at it and Louis cannot be blamed. He is all happiness and all joy, the trifling things of the world do not concern him and it will not be Oliver who makes them his concern.

-

“Kitten a letter has arrived for you today,” Louis says by way of greeting one day and hands him a sealed envelope with the Hampton crest. Oliver fears in that moment for his family, for his father’s health. He rips it open in a hurry and reads and then stops and blinks and reads again. He thinks he can see his sister’s tear stains where they have dried along the way. Caroline, his sweet Caroline, the only other child his father ever had who bore him any love. She was only a child when he left, is only a girl yet, and yet her frantically written words tell him she is with child herself and desperate and scared.

 _I am so desolate_ , she writes, I _could not think of who to tell. I cannot stand to think it but at night I think, sweet Prince Ollie, that your mother calls me from the sea. They say when she was with child she cried the ocean, I think I can understand._

 -

Seeing the house for the first time is second fiddle to the feeling of the shore he was born to under him. Still, the sight is intimidating. He takes Louis’ hand in his and tries to take comfort in looking at him, but the way his eyes settle on the Hampton estate with a cold determination keep any comfort from him.

“Oliver,” Caroline cries as she flings herself at him. There is a red mark angry across her face that makes him want to cut someone to shreds.

“Caroline what is the meaning of this,” he says as his fingers trace her cheek.

“I thought if I told mother first – but she – she won’t speak to me and if she would do this then I can only imagine what father will – he’ll kill me!”

“Caro. Caro, shhhh. Caro my queen he’ll do nothing of the sort. Father is kind, father understands what it is to be truly madly in love and to be left. He’ll understand.”

Caroline sobs in his arms for what seems to be days, but once the sun begins to set he convinces her that they must make it the rest of the way home. Louis trails behind them.

-

In the end their father does understand, but the circumstance are different he tells them, because Caroline is unmarried, because Caroline will be seen to have brought this upon herself, because Caroline is a woman.

“There is nothing I can do as much as I wish, but to send you away,” their father says gravely. “And when the time comes to arrange for the child to be given a decent home –“

“No!” Caroline falls to her knees before their father’s desk, the one they would always use to play hide away when she was a little thing herself. She clutches her stomach and speaks tightly through tears. “Father you can’t take it away, you can’t!”

“I won’t have our good name besmirched,” their father says as he stands, “I did enough of that myself.”

“So now your daughter is to pay for your youthful mistake?”

“You speak out of turn, Oliver,” the man snaps.

“I can’t see how, seeing as I am your mistake. I am that child you would turn away. Only you gave me your name and now you can’t just sweep me and hide me away.”

“Oliver!”

“You cannot take that child away,” he says as he lifts his sister from the floor and holds her close, “I can’t believe you’d even –“

“What if the child had a father,” a calm cool voice says from the doorway. Oliver turns to see Louis, not as he knew him in a thousand mornings or a million whispered words, but as he met him. Perfect and searching. The smile of opportunity bright in his eyes.

-

Caroline’s dress is white, like the sea foam. The train is miles long and the church bells sing and everyone is cheerful. He watches her, cannot watch anyone else, does not let his eyes wander away to find deep green ones for fear of what he will find there. Laughter or pity or wretched indifference. He does not feel used as he should, but in turn, he does not feel much of anything.

Caroline seeks him out after the wedding, finds him settled on a rock with the ocean spraying against his knees.

“Will you ever love me again?”

He cannot find it in himself to answer, he hardly knows what he’d feel for her if he could feel at all.

“I dreamt she would be a girl,” she whispers, “and I woke up so sad because I wished – but then I thought perhaps Olive? Isn’t that a lovely name?”

“That’s unnecessary.”

“Please Ollie,” she says as her voice cracks like porcelain pieces, “please don’t hate me. I couldn’t stand to know you hate me. I will be so alone, with her.”

“She will never be alone,” he finds that he must say, “if you name her Olive then she will be just as mine as she is his. Which is to mean not at all. But I will protect her, because I know you can’t and I know he won’t. She will never be alone, but you – you made your choices, and I can’t promise you the same.”

Caroline leans her head on his shoulder and he knows, deep inside him, he knows she understands. Knows the future terrifies her and he wracks his brain for something to say. So he lies to her.

“I’m sure you will be very happy with him.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally CAN'T WAIT to hear what you guys think, comments!!!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that took for freaking ever, my apologies! This is another flashback chapter but there won't be more of these for the foreseeable future!

**TEN YEARS AGO**

Connor has been riding for two days and one very long night in rough weather, but it’s nothing compared to the terror he feels as he stands a little ways from this door. He thinks back to the place he’s left, how one could see the house from miles away and ride down for ten minutes before reaching the brass handles and thinks this is much better. Much simpler. Just a door that gives way to a cobbled street. He’s dismounted and holds the reigns tightly as his horse snorts and huffs behind him, just as cold and tired as him.

When the door finally opens it pours out soft light and warmth like a sunrise. “Connor? Connor what in the world?”

He tries to smile and clenches his hand around the soft leather of the reigns. “Miss me?”

His sister gathers him up in her arms and Connor’s freezing body relaxes into the warmth of her embrace. For a while, he’d been sure he’d never be held again. When Gemma pulls away her eyes are wet and her expression full of concern. She ties the horse to a small post and pulls Connor into the house, one arm wrapped tight around him. “Connor you obstinate foolish child, come inside.”

His teeth clatter, but he manages to grin while he speaks. “So you did miss me, right?”

“Connor!” She throws a soft coat over him and grabs him by the ear. “Oh come by the fire, you’re frozen. Stop speaking nonsense. What are you doing here? Where are Mama and Papa?”

He says as firmly as he can manage while his body shivers, “They said you were dead Gemma, they said they no longer had a daughter, they said if you insisted on marrying that man then you might as well be dead to them.”

Gemma sighs and takes his hand. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well… well it should. But it doesn’t matter. I have a sister, so if they have no daughter then they have no son.”

“Connie,” she leans her forehead towards his and cups his cheek, “Connor you shouldn’t have. They love you.”

“I don’t care,” he says as he pulls away and stands, “you won’t have to – I don’t need you to take me in. I can take care of myself –“

She smiles as she always does when he calls himself grown up. “Connor you’re thirteen-”

“I only wanted to let you know they don’t have children anymore, Gemma.” He needs her to understand, she must know that he means it. “Because that’s what they deserve.”

She stands and wraps her arms around him again. She still smells like mint leaves and home. “You stupid stubborn boy.”

-

Eric scares Connor. He isn’t sure why, because Eric is a quiet man with sky blue eyes and a kind smile, but he scares him. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t understand how he could make Gemma love him so much, so much that he made her shout at papa and marry him anyway and live like a … well like they do. Calling the small house modest would be a generous comment, and every day Connor spends there he worries. He worries that he’s taken warm bedclothes from them. He worries that they stretch their meals to feed him. He worries that he heard them whisper about setting some money aside for Connor to attend the schoolhouse.

Maybe he’s afraid of Eric because if the man had any sense, he’d have turned him out the moment he saw Connor sitting there, shivering and terrified and determined. Instead, he had rushed to bring him tea and a warm wool throw.

“You don’t fool me,” Connor says as he leans up against Eric’s counter. “I’m not helping at all. And even if I were, working for you doesn’t bring you any money.”

“Sure it does,” Eric says lightly as he scratches away at his accounts. “You save me time, which saves me money. Which you shouldn’t be worried about at your age. Money.”

“I’m thirteen, not an idiot.” Connor scoffs. “Of course I know to worry about money.”

“Stop worrying about money,” Eric says distractedly, “and worry about getting those bolts of satin to Mrs. Knight.”

-

Connor bursts into the shop one morning with a wild smile and extra coins in his pocket.  “Guess who just sold an extra ten yards?”

Eric peeks from around the back of the shop and excuses himself with someone. Connor throws a hand over his mouth and takes a step back. But Eric doesn’t seem upset by the interruption and steps out from his stores with an elegant woman trailing behind him.

“Connor, this is Mrs. Keating. One of our most faithful clients.”

The woman reminds him of the portraits of queens in his history books and he resists the urge to bow. “I’m sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean to come in screaming.”

“Sounds like you have exciting news,” the woman says, looking amused.

“What’s that about selling extra?”

“Well I took extra,” he admits, “not by accident. Just in case. And she – Mr. Richards’ daughter – she kept saying how she wasn’t sure about the color or something. Well I just started telling her how nice it looked and I don’t know I think I said something about her hair – the point is she took all of it and asked for more colors!”

Eric looks like he’s about to start laughing and the woman – Mrs. Keating – just looks interested.

She turns to Eric with a sweep of her skirts. “Who is your young salesman?”

“My nephew,” Eric says warmly, “Connor Walsh.”

“Your wife’s family? I wasn’t aware you’d made up with the Walsh’s.”

“Oh we haven’t,” Eric says quietly. “Connor here has a mind of his own.”

 Mrs. Keating turns back to Connor then, but she doesn’t say a word. She just looks at him much in the way particular clients examine their more luxurious cloths and laces.

“I’ll be back for that order in a couple of days Eric,” she says as she drops a small purse heavy with coins on his desk, “I’ve business further north.”

Connor watches her go in a strange state of awe, mildly terrified by the mere presence of her. 

-

Gemma and Eric sit by the fire and smile at each other and talk softly about the baby. They’re having a baby. Gemma and Eric are in love, they live in a house with one room and a stove that doubles as a hearth, they feed Connor and have a jar hidden in the cupboard to send him to school come fall. They are happy and poor and Connor worries.

-

He hears them muttering and feels fear tight in his chest. He knows he shouldn’t He knows he should have left them long since and not put them in this position. He steels himself to say just that, that he’ll return to the estate and just – just come to see them whenever he can. That he’ll stand up to his father instead of running away in the middle of the night with nothing but an impassioned note left behind.

“Connor?” Gemma calls out, “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

“Well lucky you I couldn’t hear a thing,” he mutters from behind the sofa.

“Come Connor,” Eric says, his voice wary, “we have something to discuss.”

Connor takes a deep breath and reveals himself, looking off to some far point as he speaks so he doesn’t have to look at them. “I’ll pack my things. You can keep Talbot, he’s a good beast, and there’s plenty of people in town to give me a ride back –“

“Connor stop,” Gemma says as she rises and comes to him. “You don’t have to go back home, you never have to do that if you don’t want to.”

Connor closes his eyes for a moment before he looks at her, “But where else would I go?”

“No where,” says Eric, “not if you don’t want to. But there’s – an option.”

“An opportunity,” Gemma corrects, “which you don’t have to take. I know you worry but there’s nothing – we’re perfectly capable of caring for you and the baby both, Connor. We’re not choosing.”

“The truth of the matter is I don’t agree with this…opportunity,” Eric says calmly, “but your sister is right, the choice is yours.”

“What,” Connor shakes his head and wraps his arms around himself, “what are you talking about?”

“Mrs. Keating,” Eric says, “you remember her, I’m sure.”

“Mrs. Keating has no children,” Gemma says gently, “but in the past year she’s taken two wards. Children about you age. One an orphan, I believe, the other a girl sent here by her family to be educated.”

“She wants to speak to you,” Eric explains, “and your sister and I are certain she means to ask you to join her household.”

“You mean as a servant,” Connor guesses.

“No,” Gemma says with a rueful smile, “as her son. Her ward.”

“But why me?”

Eric shrugs, “Ours is not to know the mind of Mrs. Keating.”

“She and her husband have money and you’d be comfortable to be sure. And your education under her would be the very best. But Connor this is your family,” she lays a hand over her rounding belly, “and I don’t want you to ever feel like this isn’t your place.”

“She has money, you say,” he speaks mostly to himself, “and if I were her …son… then you’d be her family too. You and the baby.”

“Don’t concern yourself with such things,” Eric insists, “we’re more than alright.”

“I’ll speak to her,” Connor decides without another moment of hesitation.  “What’s the harm in just speaking to her?”

-

Gemma smelled of mint leaves and home when he hugged her goodbye. Eric clapped his shoulder and wished him well, but leaned in and reminded him that home was always a day’s ride away. That was a day ago now. Beside him Mrs. Keating gave him a comforting smile which only filled him with the thrill of the unknown, while before him lay oceans of grass and house that seemed to grow from the ground and reach up with its white boarded walls to the sky.

“Do you know why I chose you, Connor?”

He swallows the knot in his throat and nods. “Because I’ve a good family name,” he guesses, “and I’m clever.”

“No,” she says calmly, “though you are right about both. I chose you because you quite remind me of myself.”

“Of yourself ma’am?”

“Yes,” she says as she looks into his eyes as if she were reading the soul of him, “You’re a worrier. You and me both we’re worriers. I saw you in all your excitement about your business exploits and underneath all that was worry, for you sister, your brother-in-law, and yourself. It’s that worry that keeps you on your toes, leaving fortunes, selling extra bolts of clothes, joining new families you know nothing of.”

Connor licks his lips and tries to calm his worry in the ensuing silence. By the house he can see a man, tall and pale, beside a dark skinned boy with wide eyes and a dark haired girl looking downward.

“Is that why you chose them?” He asks, but immediately wonders if he’s over stepped. The woman beside him takes a long while to answer.

“I’ll let you see for yourself why I chose them,” she says, her eyes trailing back towards the sea of grass out her window, “I think in time you’ll be the first to understand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments comments FEED THE AUTHOR.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot, IT THICKENS.

Connor’s feet are cold, always cold as ice. It makes him jump in the middle of the night, but when he wakes to it Oliver can’t help but smile. There is nothing in the world that warms Connor but he finds it fun to try. He brings him new covers and blankets from his outings to town with Wes and makes him hot cups of coffee once he was sure that Connor would never accept a cup of tea. Nothing works in thawing Connor’s skin, but it does make him smile on occasion. It doesn’t do anything at all when Oliver drapes himself over Connor’s shivering body in the middle of the night, nothing for the temperature of his skin at least, but it does make the other man settle into a calm sleep.

Connor does have warm lips, however, and seems to enjoy using them to jolt Oliver awake.

“Good morning,” he says – voice husky with sleep right beside Oliver’s ear.

Oliver manages a whimpered good morning before Connor sets to work on waking up the rest of him.

-

“Oliver?”

He snaps to attention and realizes Wes must have been speaking to him for the past minute. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.”

Wes is calm as always when he repeats himself. “I asked if Madame had spoken to you yet.”

“She hasn’t, what would she have to speak to me about?”

Wes takes a drink of his coffee, the one that sits beside its full and untouched partner. The cup belongs to Rebecca, a woman about whom Oliver knows two things – Wes had loved her and she was dead. “I’m not exactly sure but I do know she’d like to speak to you. Maybe you can go see if she’s in the study.”

Oliver doesn’t much like the idea of secluding himself with Lady Keating for any period of time, but his presence is required. He wishes idly that Connor could be with him, but he went off to continue working on his case just minutes after he and Oliver finally pried themselves from bed.

Annalise Keating does not shout, at least she has never done so in front of Oliver, but her voice carries with patient command from within her study before Oliver can so much as knock. “Come in.”

She sits at her large desk with a multitude of pages scattered around her. “Have a seat Mr. Hampton.”

“Just Oliver is okay,” he says quietly as he takes a seat.

She looks up at him with those undecipherable eyes. “I’m glad at least you’ve not taken up being called Mr. Walsh, the confusion would have lost its charm quite fast.”

Oliver blushes at the comment and clears his throat to steer away from the subject. “Wes said you might want to speak to me.”

She finishes off something she was scribbling without so much as a glance, but once she is through she folds her hands on her lap and looks up at him. “I hear you’re quite good with puzzles, Oliver. With code.”

Oliver doesn’t know what he is meant to say, doesn’t know what it is she wants, so he only nods.

“Good, I’m glad you have a good skill of your own. I wonder if you could help me with a puzzle of my own.”

She opens a drawer and digs out a journal, bound in dark brown leather and embossed with an elegant R.

“I want you to keep this between us,” she says, her eyes trained on his not letting his gaze escape, “it is of the utmost importance that Wes know nothing of this. It will only upset him. And if any his brothers or sisters were to know they would not be able to resist informing him. So we must keep this between ourselves. Can you do that, Oliver?”

No, he wants to say, I am married to one of your sons and I am fair friends with the others – I’ve no reason to keep your secrets from them.  Instead, hypnotized and terrified by her gaze he whispers, “Yes, ma’am.”

She pushes the journal forward. “This, I’m sure you’ve guessed, is Rebecca’s personal journal. Wes I imagine has forgotten about it, but she always kept it with her. No one would have touched something so private before her death, but now what secrets she had could only help us in uncovering the fog of questions surrounding her death.” Keating pulls the journal open and Oliver quickly understands his work. The entire thing is encrypted, complexly. It is not something a few minutes study could tear apart.

“Why would she write so secretly,” Oliver wonders softly, mostly to himself.

“That is precisely what we must know,” Keating agrees, “if we ever hope to find some explanation of her death. Even if it was by her own hand as it has been determined, Rebecca left no letter – no word of consolation for her husband or anyone else. Anything you can find.” She pushes the journal closer to him still and Oliver understands he has no choice but to accept.

“I’ll do everything I can,” he tells her, and finds he means it.

-

There is something frantic about Connor that evening. He is so late to dinner he does no more than take a roll from the table and excuse himself. Oliver watches him, trying to tame his concern as the others raise eyebrows and mumble too softly among themselves. Keating at the head of the table, seems unperturbed, while Bonnie seems overly interested in her chicken and Frank looks as if he’s won some kind of bet.

“If you’ll excuse me I’ll just go see –“

“Of course,” Laurel says with a too bright smile, while at the head of the table Lady Keating nods once in permission and agreement.

Oliver can hear the pacing and rustling inside their room when he reaches their landing. Inside he finds Connor walking rather aimlessly around the room, grabbing and moving things with no rhyme or reason. His family’s picture is moved to the far corner while his most well-worn book is thrown carelessly onto a pillow.

“Connor are you –“

“Take of your clothes,” Connor whispers rather fiercely.

“I – what?”

“I’ve solved my case,” Connor says, and while his smile is wide it does not reach his eyes. “Aren’t you proud of me? You’re the first one to know. I haven’t even told her, I haven’t told anyone –“

“That’s great,” Oliver says, torn between his true pride in Connor’s work and the concern for his current state. “Are you sure you’re –“

“Take of your clothes, Oliver,” Connor says, nearly charging at him, “I want to celebrate.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t,” Oliver tries to keep track of his words with Connor’s lips pressed to the dips of his collar, “we shouldn’t talk about it? Or, oh Connor.” His eyes roll upwards, seeking mercy or grace as Connor’s hand sneaks its way under his shirt. “Maybe we could – read or,” he tries to say between heavy breaths, “or take a stroll… do married things?”

“Married things? Take a stroll?” Connor’s tone is all teasing, “And I suppose after that we can have a priest give us a proper wedding.”

“Forget I said anything,” Oliver says as he feels the heat rushing up his skin. He reaches for the buttons of his own shirt, “Let’s do this instead.”

“Oh no,” Connor says as he pulls away, his smile still frantic but truer, “watching you fluster is so much more pleasing.”

“Forget I said anything,” Oliver begs as he pulls Connor closer, “forget it, just kiss me.”

“We can do married things,” Connor whispers against his skin, trailing his fingers maddeningly until he reaches the clasp of his trousers, “This is a married thing.”

-

It isn’t the touching that finally brings the truth of his feelings forward. It isn’t the way Connor kisses down every notch of his spine or spends what seems like hours exploring him with his tongue as if every inch of his body is interesting and worthy of note and discovery. It isn’t even the way his body seems like fire against Connor’s when they’re together, when they move like waves rushing towards shore. No, it isn’t then. Oliver knows that it’s when it’s over, when Connor is too spent and dizzy with the rush of it to pull away from him, when he just lays across Oliver’s back and traces nonsense against his skin. He might not even realize it, in his pleasure drunk state, but Connor tends to draw boxes and the vague shape of houses and circles of Os on Oliver’s side with his fingertips. It is when Connor nuzzles at the back of his neck and calls him his beautiful husband, his words meant in jest but tinged with naked awe and unexpected earnestness.

It’s then he knows it’s entirely too late, he’s done it again. A truly beautiful man of the kind one imagines the foam nymphs make, has given him a moments attention, a night’s pleasure, a kind word. Nothing that amounts to anything, in the end, and Oliver has fallen irreparably in love with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do remember that I am more or less unavailable for the next two weeks and updates will come a bit more sparsely, but they will be dispensed by the guardian of the fic while I am WiFi-less. MISS ME TONS AND LEAVE ME COMMENTS!


	13. Chapter 13

_The scent of the sea is so overpowering it wakes him, but his bed is not his bed and beside him he can only see Oliver’s back, the shape of him seamless from the rocky coast that surrounds him. It is not quite dawn nor twilight, a dim clouded sky with no edge in sight overhead. He knows that it is a dream – no matter how hard the ground beneath him or how wet the breeze against his chest._

_A voice shakes his insides but leaves his surroundings unperturbed, it sounds like his father, or Annalise, or a voiceless angry god. “Give him back to me.”  He turns to look at Oliver again, to see if the other man could hear but there was no one lying beside him anymore, nothing but jagged rock’s edge and sea foam._

_“Give him back,” the voice insists._

_Connor looks down and finds the sea foam tinged pink, darker and darker until it pours over the rocks like blood fresh from the veins._

Connor jolts awake so violently that he nearly knocks Oliver off the bed. The other man reaches for his spectacles and wraps an arm around Connor’s waist before he can fall off the bed himself. 

“Hey, hey! It’s okay, you were just dreaming; it’s okay.”

Connor pants as he tries to catch his breath. “You were-“

“Were you dreaming about me?” Oliver’s face flounders between softly pleased and deeply concerned. 

“No,” he says too quickly, “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” He takes a steadying breath and looks around him. The room is a dark blue, near sunrise. 

“You’re sweating,” Oliver notes, sounding bewildered, “how could you be sweating?”

Connor tries to shake the remaining confusion off and focus on the touch of Oliver’s hands. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s sweltering.”

Oliver snorts softly and pushes the lightly sweat soaked hair off Connor’s face, “Your skin is always so cold, it’s just surprising is all.”

Oliver is right, Connor knows, his skin has always been frozen compared to the heat that constantly surrounds him. But now he realizes he can’t quite feel the warmth of Oliver’s skin, it must be because his own skin matches it. 

“Maybe you have a fever,” Oliver whispers, his voice tinged with worry as he presses his palm to the back of Connor’s neck. 

Connor shakes his head but takes Oliver’s hand as he pulls it away, he holds it between them for a moment with his eyes unfocused and his mind in tangles before pulling it close to his chest. He whispers something, he hardly understands his own words before Oliver starts running his other hand over Connor’s shoulder.

“What’s that?”

Connor clears his throat and let’s go of Oliver’s hand, finally looking him in the eye. “I said we should go for a stroll today.”

Oliver’s face runs the range of emotions from confusion to surprise to a quiet delight and fond exasperation. “Well I’m glad you’ve warmed to the idea, but I think you’ve done so too literally. Your skin is hot. I think I’ll go into town to get you a physician.”

Connor shakes his head and leans back against the pillows, mindful to pull Oliver back with him. “Don’t need a doctor.”

Oliver pushes Connor’s hair back again. Everything seems slower now, slower than Connor has ever lived before. It’s slow when Oliver leans in and presses his lips to Connor’s forehead, surprisingly cool to his newly heated skin. It’s slow when he pulls away and leans against Connor’s side so softly it’s almost shy. “Sleep then,” Oliver whispers.

-

The image of blood on a rocky cliff stays with him through a lively breakfast discussion about crosswords and cases. It keeps him distracted the way the violence of his dream mingles with the quick and heated memory of the previous afternoon. He remembers being pinned against creaking boards and the scent of hay, he remembers the blood tide and the scent of ocean. He doesn’t know which one feels less real but he feels sick with himself and confused by it, he’s never been bothered with his methods before. Lady Keating hasn’t said a word about the case since he told her what he’d found early in the morning. Maybe he made a mistake, maybe it isn’t as cut and dry as it had appeared to him. Maybe it was all for nothing. But when had that ever mattered before?

“The post is here,” Bonnie announces with little inflection as she enters the breakfast room. She hands a healthy stack to Lady Keating at the head of the table, a few notes to Frank, and an envelope to Asher. 

Asher looks down at the letter in his hand and looks back up at Bonnie’s empty hands. “Nothing for Michaela?”

“Asher,” Michaela begins to say quietly.

“Nothing,” Bonnie interrupts, “and please don’t set it on fire today.”

Asher rolls his eyes and opens the envelope in an attempt at viciousness which ends in clumsy ripping. His eyebrows climb up and his expression lightens. “Good advice there,” he says as he pulls a fair bit of bank notes from the envelope and, discarding the letter, proceeds much to Connor’s amusement to count the money right there. He dives it into two neat stacks.

“That money comes from your mother,” Michaela tells him from across the table, “and you know it.”

“Who signed the letter?” Asher asks like a challenge. 

Michaela takes the letter and skims it setting it down with a sigh, “Judge Millstone.”

Asher finishes his calculations with a nod and sets one of the stacks in front of Michaela, almost upturning her cup. “Father signs it, I divide it. That’s what we agreed.” 

“I never agreed-“

“Take the money Miss Pratt.” Lady Keating says as she reaches over for the pot of coffee. “We’re under no delusions at this table.” 

Connor looks at Oliver out of the corner of his eye and feels his heart rise and fall, the way it always does to see him put together puzzle pieces.

-

“Michaela and Asher are truly…related?”

Connor snorts softly before clearing his throat. “Far be it from me to expose Judge Millstone’s affairs, I hardly know the man.”

“Do they do that often? Talk about it so openly I mean.”

Connor shrugs. “Asher is a strange mix of brilliant stupidity and useless honor.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid at all,” Oliver says after a moment’s reflection, “it is natural to want to protect one’s sister.”

“Particularly when they don’t need protecting,” Connor agrees.

“Would you like to go for that stroll after all then?” Oliver asks with practiced nonchalance in an evident effort to appear ambivalent to Connor’s answer. 

“Oh.” He remembers that morning perfectly, how much he’d needed to be certain Oliver was there beside him, how imperative it had felt to keep him close and happy. “I –“

Oliver shakes his head before he can put two more words together. “It’s alright, forget I mentioned it. Have a good day, I guess.”

Oliver is half way back up the stairs when Connor manages to get his thoughts back in order. “Oliver, wait. I didn’t mean… we can go if you really want.”

Oliver seems to ponder over his next step for an eternity before he takes a step back down towards him. “We really don’t have to, I’m perfectly capable of keeping busy.”

“Aren’t you bored all day?”

Oliver shrugs as he finally reaches the landing again. “Lady Keating gave me a …puzzle. It’s keeping me busy enough.”

“Alright,” Connor agrees, though the unshakable feeling of wrongness settles in his chest. He shouldn’t let Oliver out his sight, not today, but there’s no reason for it. “I’ll see you tonight then.”

-

Connor knows his form is less than perfect, he stopped taking any kind of riding lesson when he left the estate, but he thinks he would never have ridden as beautifully as Oliver. It’s almost like watching a coordinated dance between him and that beast. 

“You look distressed, Connor.” 

He jumps slightly, Michaela looking pleased with herself behind him.

“You look delighted by that,” he snaps.

“Testy,” she chides, “trouble with married life? From what I’ve heard it certainly has had no effect in your ways.”

He finds his hands clenching where they hang but takes a breath to calm himself. “It would do you well to mind your own business.”

“It would do you well to stop playing games you don’t understand,” Michaela says, her tone suddenly serious. “Especially without warning the other player.”

“Oliver knows that this is a business agreement,” Connor says with as much certainty as he can muster, “I don’t see the need in drowning the man with unnecessary details. What is it to him?”

“One thing,” she says as she picks at the grass blades sticking to her dress, “one thing is to not provide him with any details. Quite another is going out of your way to keep those details from him. It’s almost as if you didn’t want to be caught. You looked like a thief in the night turning that report in today so early, as if you’d been waiting for first light to do it.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he says with too much force, turning to face her.

“The gentleman doth protest too much,” she says with a grin, “and whatever you did wasn’t enough to keep him quiet. The farm hand. Quite the opposite, it’s all over town already, if you know where to listen.”

He feels sick to know it’s true; he’s never had to do anything of the sort before. Gentlemen keep their own silence and when poor men speak… well it has never mattered before.  

“Connor,” she says, her voice amused once again, “don’t tell me you truly care for your husband’s good opinion.” 

He says nothing which only seems to increase her morbid delight. “Oh that’s marvelous. You truly care for him. Connor I had no idea you knew how. Or well… I guess you don’t, do you? Or you wouldn’t have dug yourself into –“

“Don’t you have fresh money to spend? Have they run out of pretty dresses and bonnets to make up for your father’s disdain?”

Michaela’s slap stings, well deserved as it has been it does the job in distracting her from torturing him.

“You deserve this,” she hisses, “I hope he sees the truth of you soon, I hope when he does he won’t stand the sight of you again.”

He listens to the rustle of the grass against his skirts, the angry crunch of her steps and the clatter of them on the porch and the bang of the screen and the shake of the doorframe. Connor doesn’t admit defeat until he’s sure there isn’t anyone there to see. He watches the fading shape of Oliver riding away he hangs to a small hope himself; that his quiet place of peace by his side in their bed can remain. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guardian of the fic here! Be sure to leave comments. Our wonderful captain lives off of them.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At laaaaaaaaaaaaast, my fic mods are partying apparently so I'm posting this myself. Hope you like it!

Rebecca’s words are burning a hole in his chest where they hide, her journal tucked into his pocket. He’s only a few entries in and already he feels the weight of all the things this girl has taken to her grave. Still he can’t deny the morbid curiosity of knowing what she knew.

He rides into town in the hopes of finding a sense of her. There isn’t much to town but a few shops, a market, and a bar. You’ll always find misery in drinking, Dottie always used to say. She’d never been wrong either.

Oliver sits at the far corner of the bar and drinks slowly, scribbling out some of the more difficult pieces of cypher on a napkin.

“No. No turn right around.” Oliver looks up from his drink to see the barkeep shaking his hand at someone coming in the door behind him. “Out where you came in from.”

“Oh I’m good for it Gumpy,” a grinning man says as he takes a seat, “just one drink.” He is tall and his face is covered in a light scruff. Even through the smudges of dirt on his cheeks the man is more handsome than himself, but then it doesn’t take much to achieve that.

The barkeep laughs full and loud, “Good for it? You’ve been thrown on your ass from that Carmichael farm and we all know it. You haven’t got two penny’s to rub together.”

“I’ll spot the man a drink,” Oliver says, quiet but clear. The Carmichaels, Oliver knows, had a farm hand mysteriously killed a few weeks before Oliver had arrived. It was the case Connor was so proud of.

The barkeep looks over at him and dusts off his apron. “As you like then.”

“That’s a good man,” the newcomer slaps Oliver’s shoulder.

“Figure if you’ve been thrown on your ass you can use a drink,” Oliver shrugs.

“You’re not from these parts are you?” The man laughs when Oliver shakes his head. “No not an upstanding gent like yourself.”

“Don’t badger the man,” the barkeep grunts as he sets down a glass in front of the stranger, “seem to be outstaying your welcome everywhere these days.”

“Can you believe the nonsense they threw me on the street for?” The man scoffs. “Inappropriate conduct – since when is that their business?”

“It’s their business when you’re messing about with another man on their God fearing barn.” The barkeep counters.

“I don’t think it’s the barn that’s God fearin’, Gumpy.” The man takes a long drink and then shakes his head. “‘Sides that kinda thing ain’t so bad as if I were taking one of their blushing daughters in the hay.”

“Took one of the sons then did you?” A woman to his right says between laughs.

“Do I look nutty to you? Wasn’t any of their kin; still don’t know why they got so shaken with it. Unless they’ve gotten chummy with the lady in the white boards. ”

The comment peaked Oliver’s interest and threw the barkeep into a fit of breathless laughter.

Oliver manages to ask the woman to his right who the Carmichaels’ former employee is referring to.

“Our Lady of the White Boards?” The woman clarifies. “The Keating widow, that’s what the town calls her. See she’s done good things for the common folk, people like the Carmichaels frown upon that.” 

“You tossed around with one of hers, no wonder they threw you out.” The barkeep tells the farm hand. “Ain’t matter what parts you were workin’ if it came from the white boards, shoulda known that.”

“Well it was well worth it,” the man says with a shrug as Oliver begins to feel ill, “the pretty one, from the hard north. Well worth it. There are other farms, not many other men like that.” The man finishes his drink and thanks Oliver again before stepping out of the bar.

He assumes the day goes on around him, people drink, his tab is settled and reopened, the sun sets. He tries to spend his lucid moments thinking about codes and cyphers, Rebecca’s portrait staring angry and judging where it hangs, her words painting heavy curtains of terror as he unravels them. None of it helps the steadily increasing moments of haze when he thinks about Connor’s hands and his lips and his whispered nothings, thinks about their cold duplicate in the ears and skin of a taller and much more tempting stranger.

When he does make it back to the house, the white boards as everyone else seems to call it, the lights are dim. Only Wes remains in the sitting room, his eyes closed and his head resting on his own shoulder. Still Oliver’s steps wake him and the man startles up in his seat.

“Oliver,” he whispers, “we were worried.”

Oliver scoffs, “Yes. My husband’s concern is evident.”

“He’s been distracted today, it’s true,” Wes admits, “but he couldn’t pry his eyes away from your absence at dinner.”

“He’ll have to get used to it,” Oliver says, the words natural and hot as they crawl up his throat and through the blur of alcohol, “I’ll be at the Hartford.”

“Oliver-“

“And that is for Madame’s knowledge, not Connor’s.” He straightens his jacket and looks down at Wes stricken face, “Please, Wes, for as long as you can manage it.”

Wes swallows but nods after a moment. “Oliver if Connor seems -”

“I’d rather not speak on it.” Oliver considers going up for his things but discards the idea. “Would you mind making sure my things make their way to me?”

Wes stands and reaches into his pocket, handing Oliver a few folded notes.

Oliver stumbles a bit away from Wes. “I’ll be fine-“

“Please Oliver,” Wes insists, “if only someone had done the same for Rebecca…just take it.”

Oliver stares for a moment before shaking his head again. Then he looks at Wes, at the bare concern in his eyes. “Can I ask you something, about Rebecca?”

Wes blinks in obvious confusion but nods.

Oliver chews his lip and shakes his head after a moment of silence. “Never mind, I – it’s stupid.”

“Please,” Wes says with a tired smile, “I don’t mind speaking about her.”

“Did she ever give any sign that she might…?” Oliver wonders if he’s pushing too far but figures he’s said this much already. “I know nothing about her but she was so young and – I guess I wish I had a sense of what kind of person she was.”

“She was…smart.” Wes looks off into the distance, somewhere Oliver can’t follow. “Above all else. She – her eyes, the way she would look at you like she knew better than you did what went on in your mind. “

He nods. “Her gaze came across in her portrait.”

Wes laughs softly, “She hated that thing.”

“She did?”

The man nods and motions for Oliver to have a seat. Perhaps he’s trying to distract him, maybe he thinks he can save Connor the trouble of running after him. Maybe he knows Connor wouldn’t run after him at all, and he’s trying to save Oliver the pain. Whatever the reason he takes a seat.

“The portrait was commissioned by Mr. Keating,” he says, leaning in. “Rebecca wasn’t ever fond of him. When he died… it was like a weight lifted off her shoulders. She hated him.”

“Why would she hate him so much?”

Wes shakes his head as if brining himself back from a stray thought. “I don’t know. I do know that he stood behind the painter for most of her sitting and that stare… that was how she always looked at him. Like she knew something –“

“Something she shouldn’t have known,” Oliver finishes.

Wes looks at him and they understand each other, though Oliver is sure neither is certain of what it is they understand.

“Oliver if you’ve your heart set on staying at the Hartford tonight please let me come with you.”

“Wes I’m perfectly capable-“

“Oh I know…it isn’t that it’s just… back home there must be people, sailors, experienced people who go out to sea and – and never come back. Not for lack of knowledge or skill but because the water had a mind to claim someone.”

“Yes,” Oliver nods, “yes it happens all the time.”

“The grasslands aren’t so different,” he whispers, “sometimes a man will walk out into them and you just… I’d like to see you safely to your destination and that’s that.”

Oliver sighs and looks out of the window to the deepening dark. He wouldn’t mind riding in it himself just to clear his mind but he can’t excuse bringing Wes out into something that troubles his heart.

“Maybe I’ll just take a seat here for the night,” Oliver concedes, “until daybreak.”

“He’s hurt you,” Wes says solemnly, “Connor he’s hurt you somehow hasn’t he? He has a good heart he just, he has frantic mind…”

“It’s already happened,” Oliver sighs, “and if we’re to be fair I was the one who made stories in my head. Connor, he made no promises to break – but I can’t stand to … well I’d just rather stay away.”

“Yes I … I understand. But you don’t have to sacrifice a bed. If you don’t mind that is, I mean, after Rebecca … well I moved to a smaller chamber, but Rebecca’s I mean – you could stay in that bedroom until morning.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“No,” Wes says quickly as he stands, “no I wouldn’t. It’s empty and you could make use of it. Besides you are just as much my brother now, and we look after family in one way or another in this house.”

Oliver stands to follow him. “Thank you, Wes. Truly I appreciate – I know how much you care for everything that was hers”

“Say no more about it.” Wes smiles. “I know Rebecca would have offered it herself, she never found Connor as charming as everyone else.”

“Did she love you,” Oliver asks as they stand outside her door, “half as much as you still love her?”

Wes takes a moment and opens the door seeming to take in the sight of what was hers. “I think she took that secret with her. Goodnight, Oliver.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys internet in europe, let me tell you, IDK how yáll do it. Do excuse the break from the usual narrative in this chapter, this one is entirely made up of a selection of entries from Rebecca´s journal. Enjoy.

July 25

Wes has gifted me a journal, graven only for myself. I’ve never tried to tie my thoughts to a page like a horse to a post. I have never done so many things.

August 12

I refused to wear white to the wedding today, it made Wes smile at me and it made the Lady smile to herself. Michaela said I must have a bouquet as grand as anything that people would speak of that instead, so I asked for lilies and Laurel sent right away for them, her sisters and brother sent them of every color in a large crate wrapped in silks. Indeed, everyone spoke of them and complimented them, but what pleased me most of the flowers was the way Mr. Darcy looked at them like they were snakes. I never dreamed to have a wedding, it doesn’t go with people like me – but I am glad that if I’ve had one it has been to Wes. Lady Keating cornered me before the wedding, she’s told me that Wes loves me and that it must be frightening for someone like me and that I should never forget it. I never forget anything.

September 25

The Whiteboards is not the drafty place I had imagined it to be. It is unseasonably warm half the time and the other half it is inarguably hot. It makes little sense, most of this house – people and things alike – make little sense. Sometimes I miss the not-home, the smell of wet clay and stove smoke slipping from the proper houses. So sometimes I miss the sunset and the moonrise and I sleep under the willow over the headstones or under nothing at all. But I always come back, always back to the Whiteboards and back to Wes. Wes who never asks where I’ve been or why there are blades of grass in my hair – who only tells me that I smell of earth and nightflower when he embraces me.

October 12

Lila’s grave has roses today. Bright, blood red, nothing that could come of the grasslands. Connor mentioned seeing things like them in his northern days. Must have taken a silver piece or ten to bring them to this place. She would have thought they were from him, she would have found it romantic – but it wasn’t. It is her parents who send them from wherever they have run away to forget her.

November 25

The nuns liked to speak of mistakes, I heard them when I hid behind the thornbush to wait for Lila after lessons every day. They spoke of mistakes and of sins and regrets. They said the Lord forgave us if we repented our mistakes. But what of mistakes we do not regret and what of mistakes we do not know we’ve made? I cannot regret loving Wes and he does not know what a sin it has been to bring me to this place, but they have both been mistakes. Will God forgive us if we never repent?

December 12

I was sick after lunch meal today. Wes tried hard to hide excitement behind concern. I must have looked a demon the way I glared at that man, but I could not help it – I know what he’s done now, I know what he did to her, even before she was dead. I’d not the heart to tell Wes I was sick with sitting across the table from Mr. Darcy instead of sick with child.

 

January 25

I did not smile once though I felt badly for the artist. I would not spare a smile to grace that man’s halls if it cost me my life. I want him to look up at me painted in expensive oils forever, I want him to see my gaze every day and know that I heard. Lady Keating knows, she must know – now we all know the truth and not a one has spoken of it. But I will not hold my tongue for long, I’ve no reason to – or rather I’ve a reason but he will understand. Wes always understands, he is loyal and I do not deserve him. But he is mine and only death will part us if our vows have their way.

February 12

I dreamt of Lila. When I woke, Wes still slept soundly beside me, his hands warm on my skin – but my hair was wet and smelled of the swamp waters so I slipped from his arms and bathed and walked for hours and I did not return to his bed, our bed, until very late.

March 25

They saved me. It was my first thought, I swear it, but it was not the most present. I looked at them, at Connor in his panic, Michaela’s mind all but lost, Laurel’s calm, and Wes – my Wes – in control and more concerned with my wellness than the blood on his hands, the blood on all their hands and soaking my dress, covering my face, glazing the floors. Lila was there, amid the blood she was as clean and pure as in her living days. She was not glad to see the life drain from her lover’s head, but she did not look angry either. I thought it would put her at peace, but she is still here – still roams the nights before the day is born. When I married Lady Keating took my hands and said we were family now, but I knew we weren’t – family is blood and things unspoken that cannot leave your home. We are a family now.

April 12

The Whiteboards are shut – the lights are dim and the clothes are dark. Only the Lady is mourning, the Lady and Bonnie, because the Lady may yawn that Bonnie will blink like a twined soul. The others worry. I breathe easy and look out of my window when the moon shines very bright that I might glimpse the sight of her.

May 25

The Lady is back to herself now, her skirts are every color again instead of mourning black – it is too soon and no one is surprised and everyone is glad like they can breathe again. They all walk like thieves with their mortal sin, but she and I we are almost free. Almost.

June 12

They turn to me now, Asher in his ignorance and Michaela in her disappointment, Laurel with measured concerned and Connor with his heart in frozen wait; they all turn to me in mistrust. Wes trusts me not an ounce more than the rest of them, oh but he loves me. He loves me almost as much as I love him – these are our mistakes. The Lord will not forgive us our unrepentant sins and so we must live with them as long as we can.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After several frantic messages and an email, the new chapter is ready for consumption! Enjoy while your author tries to deal with internet issues as she relaxes in a park by the beach with public Wi-fi.

“Connor,” Laurel’s voice sounds far away but it is only another moment before he looks up to see her beside him at the table while the others distract themselves with dinner and conversation.

“Connor,” she repeats, “your supper is getting cold again.”

“Don’t fret,” he snaps, “you’re like a hen.”

She shakes her head, “You’re not yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“At least you know he’s safe,” she whispers, “that man at the Hartford-“

“Louis,” he hisses.

“Yes, his brother-in-law isn’t he?”

Connor nods and stabs at his dinner, “Yes.”

“Well that means he’s with family. He’s okay. And I’m sure that once you give him some time –“

“I said that it is fine,” he says as he cuts viciously into his steak, “and now I’m eating see? Now let it alone.”

“Okay,” she says softly, still looking at him with eyes full of patronizing pity, “okay.”

-

“You weren’t half so dour before you finally decided to go after him,” Asher notes after dinner, books and notes splayed around them.

Wes shares a look with Laurel and then clears his throat. “Did he send word with his brother-in -law?”

“Louis,” Connor says in a shrill mocking tone, “had plenty of words to say himself.”

Michaela looks up from the paper she had been cautiously writing on with her new fountain pen, “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Connor says as he flips a page with disdain, “is that there is some… some something between that blasted Louis and Oliver.”

Laurel gasps, “His sister’s husband? He said as much?”

“Of course not,” Connor snaps the book closed, surprising himself by how much the suggestion infuriates him, “it was before that. And he didn’t say as much but he didn’t need to. That flouty long-haired imbecile.”

“Someone’s jealous,” Asher says as he pretends to read Lady Keating’s notes in front of him.

“I’m not jealous,” Connor grounds out, “Oliver can do as he pleases. Why should I care?”

“I don’t know,” Michaela shrugs, “perhaps because you accosted the post carrier three times this week? Or because Mrs. Hartford has banned you from The Hartford until you can, and I quote, ‘ _refrain from threatening her for your husband’s forwarding address’_ , or because-”

“That’s enough,” Bonnie’s voice cuts through Michaela’s jibes and makes them all jump. “Will we have no peace in this blasted place until Connor’s little code breaker is returned? I thought we were all well over and done with this, the deal is struck – the goods are theirs and their name is ours to associate with. Why is this nonsense disrupting you still?”

“Because Connor is in love with him,” Asher says, as if it were the simplest thing in the world in that tone that none of them can quite believe Bonnie lets him get away with, “surely you can understand.”

Bonnie looks at Asher out of the corner of her eye, “Is that true, Walsh?”

“That’s nonsense,” Connor mutters, “Asher is just being childish.”

“Well,” Bonnie says, still looking at Asher, “go fetch him or come to some agreement but I want all this gossip and pouting over and done with before my lady notices the laziness of your work. All of you.”

-

Louis’ smile had enchanted him once. Once, he had loved when Louis sat too close and ran the back of his hand over Oliver’s arm.

“Louis. Don’t.”

Louis tuts as he pulls away. “Oh, come on Ollie.”

“You are married to my sister,” Oliver reminds him.

Louis rolls his eye as he leans forward with renewed intent. “I’ve never touched Caroline and you can ask her if you doubt my word.”

Oliver allows himself an amused snort. “Your word?”

“I said you can ask her.”

“I don’t intend to ask my sister if you’ve slept with her.”

“Well you can,” Louis shrugs, “because I haven’t. You know women and their softness aren’t my inclination.”

Oliver watches warily as Louis returns to his ministrations, no longer as inclined to shake him off as he had been when he first noticed the look of interest in his eyes.

“Still,” he sighs after a moment, “don’t.”

“I’ll wear you down Ollie,” Louis says, his hand only pausing as he smiles in that wicked way that no longer sways Oliver’s heart.

“You might,” Oliver concedes, “but for now – don’t.”

Louis finally relents, his hands raised in defeat just as Caroline enters.

“Louis,” she calls from the door, her hands held tight to each other and a quiet seething in her gaze.

Louis is impervious to this just as he is impervious to anything that might make him less pleased with himself. “Yes, sunbeam?”

“It’s getting late and Olive is still trotting about outside,” she says with clear intention.

“Is that so?”

“Go Louis,” she says as she lets her hands fall to her sides and loses her posture, “make yourself useful.”

Louis glares but only for a moment before he flits forward and kisses Oliver, just the corner of his lip before he flies past his wife and out the door.

Oliver turns to her, still shocked by Louis’ nerve, “Caroline I-“

“Oh please,” she waves a dismissive hand, “I only wanted him to leave you alone; you didn’t seem to be enjoying it.”

Oliver takes her hand as she sits beside him, “Does he treat you well?”

“We do not treat each other at all, except at family functions and public displays. For Olive’s sake.”

“Are you not even friends?”

“One must trust their friends and I do not trust my husband,” she says as a matter of fact, “as I well shouldn’t and as you well know not to. He has his bed and I have mine and it is not our concern who comes into them.”

“Well that is… civilized,” he sighs.

“Civilized? Oliver I tried to give my daughter a father and all I’ve given her is a…. a snob of a cousin with no sense of propriety or any affection for her. We can hardly hold a conversation and he’s …I’m sure whatever it is you have with that boy is much better.”

“It certainly isn’t civilized,” he murmurs, “any of it.”

“You know you don’t have to tell me but I –“

“I can’t tell you Caro,” he says as he looks off, “I can’t.”

“Oliver, you worry me.”

Oliver takes a deep breath, his mind still wandering. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“When you told me about Olive,” he pauses, her posture suddenly upright and nervous, “how did you know – why did you speak so openly in front of Louis?”

“I thought he loved you,” she says simply, “I knew if he loved you he would keep his silence.”

“Of course,” he says, nearly laughing. It was so clear. Why trust him with such damning evidence? All Keating had to do was trust Connor would make Oliver love him, make him do anything to keep him safe. Maybe she hadn’t counted on Connor’s indiscretion, maybe she knew it wouldn’t matter if Oliver was truly in love.

“Oliver what is the matter? Has that man hurt you?”

“Would I be here if he hadn’t? But it’s my own fault,” he says before she can become too alarmed, “I had undue expectations. But there’s more – more than even I understand, and I cannot speak on it.”

She nods after a moment, “I understand.”

“I just need a place to gather myself,” he says quietly, “and then of course I will go back.”

“You take as long as you need, Oliver,” she says as she leans in to kiss his cheek, just as soft and soothing as she had when they were children.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER 17 HAS ARRIVED! Enjoy and as always review!

_Rebecca looks nothing like the girl who walked the halls as if they were the darkened streets she knew so well. Rebecca looks frightened.  Her hair is wet and seems to go on forever, like rivers, her face shadowed under the hood of a cloak. She is crying. Around his ears, Connor can hear the waves crashing._

Connor jolts awake and makes himself dizzy floundering for a neighboring body, for the soft caress of worried hands, and for whispered words. There is nothing. The sky is a pre-dawn blue, like indigo ink, and he is alone.

He finds himself heading down the stairs, down to the portrait where they try not to linger. He stares. He looks up at Rebecca, at the fierce hatred in her eyes, at the judgement they all deserve, and he tries to match it with the vision that robbed him of sleep.

“When you are with your husband once more,” Lady Keating says as she steps beside him, “do remind him that he only sent half of the work I set him and I do expect the rest.”

“What work?”

Keating’s judgement is clear as bells in her eyes. “Do you think I had you marry him because you seemed bored, Mr. Walsh? Or that I’ve taken any of you in out of sheer maternal yearning?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then do not look so surprised.”

Connor nods and turns to look at the painting once more. “Ma’am?”

“Yes, Mr. Walsh?”

“Did you marry for love? Did you love him?”

“I did.” She says after only a short pause, “Deeply and for too long, before the proper emotions of marriage set in. Distrust, contempt, the occasional bout of fear.”

Connor clears his throat in childish nerves and asks the questions that plague him. “Do you wish you hadn’t? Loved him I mean.”

“Of course I don’t wish that, Connor,” she says, her eyes trained on Rebecca’s eternal gaze. “I know what you’re thinking but the world always has its way. For years I was a happy woman, and no one and nothing can take that away. Not even him. Not even her.”

“I’m going to get Oliver back.” He whispers, not sure what has him confessing his silliest emotions to her, “I think I may love him.”

“Then I wish you many years of willful ignorance and stupid happiness,” she says, most sincerely, “may he be stronger than his blood.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means hurry and fetch your husband,” she says as she takes her eyes from the portrait and turns to him, “and remind him that he’s not turned his work in.”

-

“Oliol, where is your pirate prince?”

Oliver looks up from his drawing of a rose bush and over at Olive’s own interpretation of the same before looking at the girl. “He is at home with his brothers and sisters.”

“And you are with your sister,” the little girl says, as if the arrangement made sense to her.

“That’s right,” he says with a small smile.

“Is aunt Lisbeth also your sister?”

“Yes,” Oliver says though he is unable to contain the shiver at the thought of his oldest sister.

“Aunt Lisbeth says not,” Olive says with a little shrug as she scribbles, “and she calls me Anne. I told her, I said, aunty Lisbeth my name is Olive Anne but everyone calls me Olive after uncle Oliol. But she said, no Anne he isn’t your uncle.”

 The girl sets her paint brush down and looks at him seriously, “I know you are my uncle Oliol, but mama and papa say not to tell big people they are wrong, so I didn’t say so.”

“Of course I’m your uncle,” he says as he kisses the top of her head, “Aunt Lisbeth is just silly sometimes.”

“Very silly,” Olive says with a few heavy nods, dipping her brush in watery red, “she said if I forgot my prayers, the angels wouldn’t come for me if I didn’t wake up again. Aunty Lisbeth is very silly, whoever doesn’t wake up again?”

“No one,” Oliver says quickly, trying to mask his anger as much as possible for the sake of the girl, “Lisbeth is the silliest of people. What would we do in the morning, if not wake up?”

“That’s what I said,” the little girl declares as she plops her paint brush on the paper once again. “There, all done.”

Oliver admires the mess of wet paper and inkblots that oddly does resemble the rose bush. “Could I take this to your mama? So she can see?”

Olive approves with a nod, taking another page and setting her sights on the tulips.

Oliver feels his anger rising with every step to the parlor, until he’s all but throwing the door off its hinges when he enters.

“Do you have any idea what Lisbeth has been telling the girl?”

Caroline looks up from her needlework, “Lisbeth hardly speaks to Olive. You know she thinks children are all but godless.”

“Lisbeth has been warning your three year old daughter that if she forgets her night prayer, her soul will be in Purgatory if she dies in her sleep.”

“That’s nonsense,” Caroline gasps, “Lisbeth is a lunatic but even she could not-“

“Couldn’t she? Since she could speak every sentence she spoke to me ended in, may God have mercy on your sin-born soul. The woman swore skipping stones on the river was devil’s work. She tried to exorcise me when she was ten!”

“I can’t turn her away any more than I could turn you away Oliver,” she says as she takes up her work again, “she is our sister. She is insane and dogmatic and she certainly won’t ever be left alone with Olive anymore, but she is our sister.”

“She is dangerous,” Oliver reminds her, “or have you forgotten that when exorcising me failed she tried to stone me to death.”

“She was ten,” Caroline says with a patient smile, “and hardly came up to your shoulder.”

“She is not ten anymore,” Oliver counters.

“I won’t let her near Olive again,” Caroline vows, “not without me there. Will that make you easy?”

Oliver huffs as he takes a seat, “I guess.”

“Remember when Cook would tell us stories about your mother,” Caroline says suddenly, a smile playing at her lips as she remembers, “you know all those folktales they said about her that you and I would just eat up. Remember when Lisbeth heard, how indignant she got?”

Oliver snickers, “She went straight to Dottie that we were hearing tales about false idols.”

“And Dottie took her by the hair-tales for tattling on her siblings, even though she sent us both to the priest for listening to Cook?”

“Oh. Dottie hated those stories,” Oliver sighs, “hates them still.”

“Did you ever believe them?”

“That my mother was a siren or sea spirit or a goddess? I wish I did. At least when I was a boy. It would have made it easier to bear when Lisbeth said she was a devil’s bride and that I was born without a soul.”

“You know it is she who is soulless and cruel,” Caroline says as she leans her head on Oliver’s shoulder, “you are kind and good no matter who or what your mother was.”

“For all it’s done for me to be good and kind,” he whispers, “I wish I were aloof like Louis.”

“Hush,” Caroline says, slapping his arm, “don’t say things like that.”

“I do. I wish I didn’t care a flint for Connor. I wish I could use secrets for my own benefit and not take them on as my own I wish – Christ, Caroline I wish I didn’t love him.”

“Ollie,” Caroline sighs as she leans back and eyes him warily, “what are you mixed up in?”

“My husband’s business I’m afraid,” he admits with a resigned smile. A bursts of loud indistinguishable voices erupts outside the door and Oliver follows his instinct, standing and covering Caroline’s body with his own. Nothing happens but the voices grow closer until he can distinguish Louis’ displeasure and another familiar voice. The argument continue without pause until the shouts are just outside the door.

“I have no need of your hospitality, I’ll see my husband and we will be on our way and you can shove your hospitality-“

“You are under my roof and Oliver is a guest of my wife, his sister, you have no business-“

“Why don’t we let Oliver decide whether or not I have any business-“

“Why don’t you just admit you’ve heard someone wants to play with your toy and all of a sudden he’s of interest to you-“

The door bursts open while the two continue to quarrel and Oliver finds himself leaning into Caroline as she pulls him closer by the shoulder.

“Oliver.”

Oliver can’t help but gape at Connor, the bastard, more beautiful than Oliver remembered though it had scarcely been more than a week since he’d seen him last.

“Oliver,” Connor says again, breathes it out, “I wrote you.”

“Yes,” Oliver answers, hating himself for not shouting or keeping his silence, “yes I know.”

“Oliver,” Louis cuts in, “I’d appreciate if you kept your domestic business out of my –“

“Do you know what I’d appreciate,” Oliver says, suddenly finding all the seething rage he’d been wanting to throw at Connor, “I’d appreciate if you we’re a half decent father to Olive, I’d appreciate if you treated your wife with some affection. And I would appreciate, Louis, if you would kindly shut the hell up.”

Just behind him Caroline contains a startled laugh within a gasp but he can barely register it because Connor is stepping closer. Slowly, as if he were approaching a startled animal.

“Oliver,” Connor all but pleads, “can we speak privately?”

_No, please stop hurting me. No, it was a mistake to listen in the first place. No, all I want is a room of my own and a life lived alone._

“Caroline,” he says instead, with his eyes trained on his husband’s sweating and creased brow, “can you give us a moment?”

She must accept because at his next understanding his sister is ushering and shoving Louis out of the room and shutting the door behind them.

“Now we are alone,” Oliver says, staring at Connor as if – with enough will – he could look through him.

“Oliver that man – it’s such a stupid thing, nothing like. It’s nothing to do with us just… just different what …what you and I have, you. I’m quite fond of you.”

“Quite fond,” Oliver huffs out, startling himself with a breathy laugh, “you’re quite fond.”

“What I mean is –“

“I’m more than fond of you, Connor,” Oliver admits, “I’m sorry if that is outside the…parameters of our arrangement.”

“Ollie I-“

“There,” Oliver says as he takes a packet out of his coat and throws it on the table before him, “that’s what you came for isn’t it?”

“What is it,” Connor asks, only sparing the bound pages a passing glance.

“That? I thought you knew,” Oliver shrugs, “that is what you married me for. I held on to the more important parts of it while I made up my mind and now I’ve made it up. I hardly think it was worth it. Marrying me for a month’s worth of work.”

“Oliver I don’t know what that is and I don’t know what Lady Keating set for you. I do not care one flint about-“

“Did you kill him?”

Oliver might have a cruel streak he was unware of or perhaps the spark of satisfaction as he watches the blood drain from Connor’s face is in knowing that at least in this, at least in producing fear, he can affect him.

“Connor did you kill Lady Keating’s husband?”

Connor’s answer is a dry whispered question, “What do you know of Lady Keating’s husband, Oliver?”

“I know he had something to do with the Stangard’s girl, the one that drowned in the swamps. I know he and Rebecca hated each other. I know that he is dead and that you were all there drenched in his blood-“

“How could you possibly know that?” Connor asks in a shaking whisper.

“Rebecca told me,” Oliver answers with calm he did not know he possessed. “Tell me Connor, did you kill him?”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long babes. This is wall to wall angst though and about that I am not even a little bit sorry.

Connor feels as if the whole world shudders and shakes around him. The only thing that stands still, the only thing he could see, is Oliver – furious and frightened in front of him.

“Does it truly matter?” Connor asks.

“Does it truly matter if you murdered your benefactor?” Oliver hisses quietly. “Is that what you’re asking me?”

“He was never my benefactor and yes,” Connor breathes out, “yes I’m asking you what difference it would make.”

“It would be one less lie.” Oliver tells him, “If that sort of thing matters to you.”

“If I did,” Connor asks lowly, “if I killed him. Would you turn me in?”

“I should,” Oliver says, quickly. Dismissively.

“Would you?”

“No.” Oliver answers as he wraps his arms defensively around himself. “Did you do it?”

“I was there,” Connor admits as he steps closer, “and it feels like enough.”

Oliver paces as if he walks a tight rope or a plank. “Do you regret it?”

“Of course I regret it,” Connor whispers. “The constant fear of being found out, it drives us all insane.”

“Let’s say his death isn’t anything to cry about, that he was everything horrible in the world. What about her?” Oliver can’t help but hold himself tighter, his voice wavering. “What about Rebecca?”

“What about her?” Connor whispers furiously, “I do not know her fate any better than Wes, or anyone else. I did not kill her. I wasn’t even at the White Boards when they found her. I’m not a killer, Oliver.”

“Don’t speak as if I’ve offended you,” Oliver snaps, “do not speak to me as if I owe you doubt, or trust.”

“How did this happen,” Connor says, so softly that he must be speaking to himself, “how did you come to be so steeped in this when you’ve no business of it.”

“Your lady was of a mind to make it my business,” Oliver says as he points to the bound pages that lay forgotten between them. “Though what would possess her to expose you all for murder to someone she knows as superficially as me, I do not know.”

Connor looks down at what he can only assume is evidence and then back to Oliver. “Did it ever cross your mind to betray our secret?”

“It did not,” Oliver admits.

“There is your answer then,” Connor says with a wry smile, “or part of it. Though I can’t imagine why she would – I wish it weren’t so.”

“I can imagine,” Oliver scoffs.

“Don’t misconstrue my words,” Connor snaps, “I wish you could be free of this, not a prisoner of Rebecca’s secrets like the rest of us.”

“How dare you blame her –“

“You didn’t know her Oliver,” Connor says, his eyes turned away and his gaze lost. “She was impossible. Impossible to understand or help, like a spider caught in her own web. Everything was intrigue and suspicion with her. Everything was Lila and vengeance.”

“How inconvenient they must be for you all. A pair of dead girls, too deceased to defend themselves.” Oliver says with a voice dipped in bitter disappointment.

“Oliver-“

“Why are you here, Connor?”

Connor tries to reach out for him but the other man turns away. “I came to bring you home.”

“Home,” Oliver says bitterly.

Connor huffs and corrects himself. “Back to the White Boards.”

“Home is the bottom of the sea,” Oliver mutters to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing. And what if I don’t –,” Oliver says as he turns back to face him, “what if I won’t come back with you, what will you all do then? Sit on a pin’s breath and hope for the best? Or is someone going to come and deal with me? Is that what happened to Rebecca?”

Connor rushes towards Oliver, gripping his arms when he tries to turn away again. “No one knows what happened to Rebecca but nothing, do you hear me,” he says as he looks into Oliver’s eyes and tries to convey the honesty of his words, “nothing is going to happen to you. No matter what you say or don’t.”

“Easy to speak so boldly when you know the outcome,” Oliver spits out, “easy when you know you have a fool for a husband who’d rather soak his soul in all this muck and blood than see you hang for what you’ve done.”

Connor stares at him, speechless and still gripping Oliver’s arms until words come to him unbidden. “I know I don’t deserve…I don’t deserve your loyalty or your silence Oliver. I know that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Oliver answers softly, “it doesn’t matter what you deserve. Life doesn’t work that way. Maybe you don’t know that but I promise it’s true. Some people deserve happiness and long lives and they die young and desolate and alone while others less deserving die surrounded by their families at 80 years old. It doesn’t matter, in this world, what you deserve. It matters who loves you and how much.”

“Oliver…”

“Save your breath,” Oliver sighs, “and stop groveling, stop lying. I’ll go back with you. Because what else could I do? Turn you in? Watch you all die? But don’t…” Oliver pauses, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Don’t pretend about us anymore, Connor. There is no us anymore.”

-

Asher kisses a trail up the slope of her shoulder, in part because he can and in part because she cannot hope to feign sleep when he does it.

“You’re still here,” Bonnie says quietly but without whispering. Her tone does not give away whether she is surprised or pleased or annoyed and Asher knows, though others might think him ignorant, that he should love someone simple and gullible and high born like himself. Asher knows this as well as he knows his father’s name, his marks at school, and the coin in his account; but there are other things Asher knows, like his father’s low morals, the subjects his teachers would not broach, and how much of the coin in his account is rightfully Michaela’s. He knows these things though he should not, just as he knows that he loves Bonnie Winterbottom intelligent and suspicious and common born as she may be.

“I am still here,” he agrees or admits or promises, “I thought maybe I could spend the night.”

“Spend the night? God, but you don’t hear when I speak.”

“Of course I hear,” he says with a grin against her skin, “I hear you in the morning when you mutter about how I’ll slice my foot one of these days walking around barefoot like that. I hear you in the afternoon when you fight with Frank about the bookeeping, all hissy and under your breath. I hear you when you tut about Wes and lately when you tut about Connor, how foolish you think they are and how fond you sound. I hear your voice go all shy and girlish when Madame reprimands you though that hardly happens at all.”

“How observant,” Bonnie says, still not turning, though she’s captured his hand and started playing idly with it by now, “but not very obedient.”

“Oh,” Asher laughs quietly at her ear, “you mean because I haven’t followed your advice and married someone young and stupid?”

“Young and stupid so she won’t take your money,” Bonnie agrees.

“Young and stupid,” he repeats, speaking his words against her neck, “don’t run with my tastes.”

“You also don’t hear me when I say spending the night is needlessly dangerous. Anyone could see you, Frank is just a few doors away-“

“Oh I hear you,” Asher says as he pulls away, sitting up as the sheets fall down his chest. “I just don’t understand.”

“I’ve told you,” Bonnie says quietly as she lays beside him, turning to look up at him, “if word gets out it will make things difficult. For both of us. It’s best you go back to your own room.”

“Right,” Asher says as he gathers his trousers and his shirt from the foot of the bed. “As long as that’s what is best.”

“It is,” Bonnie says, though her voice waivers from convinced to convincing, “if word gets out-“

“My father would disown me more than he already has? The people who scorn you for holding employment would have something else to turn their nose up at? What?”

“Your father will forgive you the moment you chose to return,” Bonnie reminds him, “and I don’t care at all for people – but this is still…”

“Not something to be proud of,” Asher laughs quiet and bitter, “is that what you’re going to say?”

“Asher-“

“No it’s fine I –“ he says as he stands, stumbling over a stack of pages and books at the side of the bed. He loses track of his thought as one of the books fall on its spine and opens, a small hand sized portrait slipping from within.

“Is this Rebecca?”

Bonnie shuffles forward on the bed, reaching for the small picture without regard of the sheet around her falling away. Asher side steps, studying the picture more closely. “Is she actually smiling? What on earth is she wearing?”

“It’s a costume,” Bonnie says,” it’s a festival sketch. My Lady found it and asked me to have it colored for Wes.”

“Is that so,” Asher hums, still holding the small page away, “are you sure?”

“Yes of course I’m sure, Millstone, give it here.”

When Asher does look up from the picture his eyes make Bonnie give up her struggle and sit back. “Asher-“

“You know I can live with being thrown from your bed,” he whispers, “I can even live with you being ashamed of us. If that’s what it takes, as long as I can still have you close I… but this is different.”

“Asher what are you on about,” she whispers firmly, “would you come back here and stop speaking nonsense?”

“I don’t think I will,” he says, even as he throws the small picture on the bed. “I think I’ll take a page from my new brother’s book and go home to my family. I may hate them but they don’t think I’m an idiot.”

“You’re acting like a child.””

“The picture is dated, Bonnie. Thirty years hence. And even if it weren’t the new coloring you supposedly paid for is cracked with age. But it’s fine, don’t tell me. I’m tired of this anyway. Ever since I burrowed my way into this house with my father’s last name and my sister’s skill. You’re right I should have listened. I think I’ll go and find a woman who wants someone young and stupid to marry.”

“Asher let’s talk about this, would you come back here? Asher!”

“Hush BonBon, you’ll wake the house,” he says with a broken smile as he cracks the door open so he can slip out, “wouldn’t want anyone to find out.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast, double chaps tonight cause y'all earned ittttttt.

They took a wrong turn about a half hour ago and Oliver has been swaying back and forth between his resolution not to break a single word with his husband and his somewhat rational fear that he is being taken somewhere far off and secluded to be murdered. The edge of the grasslands is a peaceful place, mostly well-tended fields and cottage houses. It certainly isn’t the swamps and it certainly doesn’t look dangerous but Oliver eyes everything around him with suspicion. Especially Connor.

He can only stand it for another half-hour before he stops his horse and glares at Connor until he turns.

“We’re almost there,” Connor says, looking like a child caught sneaking pastries. “Just a bit up the road.”

Oliver eyes the cottages and then looks back at him. “Where are you taking me?”

“Come on Oliver,” he says as he starts down the road again, “if you were of a mind to turn around you would have done so an hour ago.”

Oliver stays just a moment longer before following after him, deciding that as long as he’s making bad choices he won’t be petulant on top of it.

They come upon a stately cottage made of stones rather than logs and surrounded by a garden so beautifully tended Oliver thinks it might have been painted on the ground. In the distance, by what looks like a patch of rose bushes, stands a woman in a wide brimmed hat with blue ribbons. She looks up at them with Connor’s eyes.

She stares at them, standing tall and clutching her hat to her head against a gust of wind. For a moment he thinks that she is smiling but in the next she makes towards them with heavy purpose.

“Connor Octavius, what do you think you’re doing?”

“And I missed you too my dove!” Connor shouts back.

He dismounts just in time to be assaulted by the woman’s hat. The attack looks painful but Connor laughs, light and joyful like Oliver’s never heard before.

“Can we – Gemma please – Gemma meet Oliver!”

The woman, Gemma, looks up at Oliver as if her single-minded fury with Connor had blinded her to him.

“Oh but look at you! Come down from there, oh let me see you.”

Oliver dismounts and is enveloped in the woman’s arms so quickly he cannot break a word.

“You are just as lovely as he wrote,” she says with a sigh. The thought of Connor seems to enrage her once more and she goes at him again with her hat.

“And you,” she smacks him soundly like a rebellious child, “you think it proper to make this introduction without warning? Get inside. Don’t talk back to me, get inside and help Eric with supper.”

Connor doesn’t argue, he only leans in to kiss the woman’s cheek – a gesture she returns – and then wink at Oliver before going inside. Oliver is left outdoors with her and –

“You’re Gemma,” Oliver says softly, “you’re Connor’s sister.”

“Ah so he does remember to mention me,” she says looking down at her skirts and wiping the dirt from her hands, “and you are his husband. Who I must say I wish I had met sooner. I did not know you were married until after the fact and – he got a strongly worded letter for it.”

Oliver blushes, “It… wasn’t much of a celebration.”

“Well,” she leans forward and takes his hand, “then we shall celebrate now. Come. Come inside you must be famished.”

-

Gemma’s home is Gemma’s home, it is not her lord husband’s estate or an ancient family mansion. It is beautiful and large but not overwhelming, it is warm most of all – lovely warm. She ushers him to a seat and tugs Connor from the kitchen by his ear. He is red faced and spluttering, something about doing as he was told and not being a child anymore. Utter lies. Oliver can’t help but smile so he coughs to hide it.

“Go find the children, they should be still outside,” she tells her brother, “and don’t you dirty yourself playing with them in the mud Connor you’re a married grown man now.”

Connor is all the redder as he shoots Oliver a quick worried glance and stomps out the door. He sits there confused and nervous, but there isn’t much time for that once Gemma shoves a man out of what she declares is her kitchen and points him in Oliver’s general direction.

He is a handsome man, sweet-looking and almost childlike in his expression. He extends his hand and Oliver takes it.

“I’m Eric,” he says softly, “it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Yes,” Oliver breathes out, “I’m sorry I’ve come empty handed I – I had no idea.”

“Please,” Eric shakes his head, “we’re family, and there is no need for announcements or gifts.”

Just then then the front door banged open and Oliver turned – more than startled – to see Connor trudge in with two muddy children hanging from his sides.

“I’ve got them! I have got them and now I am going to have them for supper!”

The children laughed and screamed and squirmed at his sides while Eric laughed and stood, grabbing the girl from one of his arms and throwing her over his shoulder. “Baths for the both of them.”

“Baths!” Connor agrees. “Can’t eat dirty children for supper, can we?”

Once the children (and Connor) are clean once again, Gemma has asked everything one could possibly ask about the White Boards and yet nothing of consequence about the mysterious place at all. Perhaps that is its gift, to be unknowable unless you live it.

A girl of about nine bounces over and takes hold of his arm. “Hello Uncle Oliver! I’m Tessa.”

“Yes hello Uncle Oliver!” Echos the smaller boy, “I’m Levi.”

“Hello,” Oliver smiles down at both children, surprised but incredibly happy to be thus received.

“Will you stay the night, Uncle Oliver?” Tessa asks, “Please! Uncle Connor says he only will if you will.”

“Uncle Connor will take us to town and buy us sweets if you stay, Uncle Oliver!”

“Traitor,” Connor hisses softly as he takes a seat across from Oliver, “we can leave tonight if you like.”

“Nonsense,” Gemma says as she sets a steaming roast at the center of the table, “you’ll leave after you’ve visited properly. You’ve kept your handsome husband from us long enough.”

“I don’t – I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Oliver tells her.

“What is it with your family,” Eric says as he leans over to speak to his wife, “and their skittishness around kin?”

Gemma shrugs, “I haven’t a clue. You’re not a northerner are you, Oliver?”

“No ma’am,” Oliver says, suddenly shy, “I’m from the coast.”

“Well I don’t know what to tell you,” she says to her husband as she hands him a basket of rolls, “it would make more sense if he were from the North. But you will stay, won’t you Oliver? For I haven’t seen my baby brother in so long –“

“Gemma,” Connor groans.

“And surely,” she continues, “if he’s finally brought you to us – we must give time to show you off.”

Oliver sends a heavy glance over to his husband, holds it long enough to see the man squirm.

“We must,” he tells Gemma, taking a sip of wine.

The children cheer and their father shushes them, across from him Connor blushes and holds his gaze, something pleading and hopeful in his eyes.

It distracts Oliver, the look in his husband’s eyes, he doesn’t even see Gemma’s wickedly pleased smile.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And NOW for a rapid change in tone I present to you - selected entries from a mysterious woman's journal. 
> 
> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Implied things AND awful things: UNDERAGE, DUBIOUS CONSENT, IT'S JUST PRETTY SAD? Do let me know if you'd like me to add any other warnings or tags.

July 25

People bow and call me Mrs. Hampton. They so often – day in and day out. Lately I think I see more of the top of people’s heads and less of their eyes. When I see their eyes they are frightened. I asked my love why they are frightened and he said it was because they did not know. I am not sure what it is they don’t know but I think I can understand. This places makes me forgetful. I forget the smell of the sea it is so far outside, past gardens that are dry and walls that are too high. I forget my love’s hands, they are far from me all the time. When they touch me in front of others they shudder and avert their eyes. I forget if I am beautiful or hideous but perhaps they would still bow and call me Mrs. Hampton. They do it so often, I think, to forget it isn’t true and why. They do it so often and this place is so forgetful, it is very difficult to remember my name.

August 12

My love says he has found a priest to marry us. I do not know much of priests or of marrying, only that I am to tell everyone it has been done. Still my love is not yet my husband and when he visits me at night he only stands by my bedside until he grows tired. My love promises everything will be true and legal – things I do not understand. But I do understand the voices in the study, the quiet tones of my love and the harsher ones of the priests. He calls me a child and a savage but not in that order, he calls my love names for choosing an improper bride.

September 25

Dottie watches me closely while I brush my hair. She does so until I realize it is my singing that upsets her. She asks why I sing of fairies and kelpies and creatures that are ungodly. I tell her I do not know what ungodly means. Dottie is a stern woman but I know she can be kind. I know so because though she always looks cross with me she sometimes looks at me with pity. I do not know if she knows that I suffer so far from the water at my feet, so far from the wet rocks and the docks, I do not know what it is she sees that she pities – but there is kindness there I can see it.

October 12

My love has brought to me the last priest in the city, though he does not look priestly. He was bearded and wore torn browncloth and his hair was beaded. The not-priest asked the age of me and I told him I did not know for sure – that I could remember 12 summers but no one remembers infancy. Maybe I had a long infancy, I made sure to add, when he looked unhappy with my answer.

November 25

Dottie has told me to leave. No one will bless this, she tells me, because I am too young and too unnatural. The world has many bastards, she tells me, but I am something worse than that. She says my love has exhausted all excuse and will not have formalities stand in the way of his desires, that if I am to save my soul I must flee. I told her that I love him and that he has promised to find someone to bless this. She looked at me with pity again and then she left.

December 12

She was right, Dottie. She had been right for longer than she had known, since the night the man with the browncloth turned us away. But he did try my love, and he says if no man will give us a Lord’s blessing we will have to be blessed by whatever sprite raised me. I did not speak and say I was raised by the caring and the charitable, I did not speak and say I knew no sprites or why my hair was fire or why my skin was not pale enough to match it. I did not speak but allowed him what wives allow their husbands.

January 25

At night I wish my love would part his hands from me as he once did. I miss the sea and the wet rocks and docks, I miss my skin feeling salt clean. I do not like the night and I do not like my love, I wish he would take me back where he found me.

February 12

Dottie pities me more than ever, but sometimes she looks so mad. I told her I do not like this that has happened to me, it makes me sick and I would wish it away. She struck me and called me a vain child, she said it was too late to act my age when I had well been warned. She said you cannot be a child and a mother. I think I would rather be a child if everyone would please.

March 25

My body betrays me and I cannot stop it. I try not to eat but Dottie always spots me. She is right I am hungry, I am famished and I am sick. I wonder if the sea would make it all better, but Dottie says I am not ill – she says it is the most natural thing in the world.

April 12

He does not come to me at night, I have my wish. For that I am grateful to the inexplicable creature in my belly. Perhaps it will have a better fate than me, perhaps it will understand things. I wish it will. I wish when life presents puzzles this little soul will have a better wit, more sights of the world, more suspicions than me. Dottie asks me if I love my child but I do not answer. I do not know what love is. Perhaps love is my wish, perhaps asking for a better fate than mine ours is all mothers can do for their child.

May 25

I dreamed of my son tonight – it was a sad story. I am not in it. But I walked through the dream of his life like a shadow in the corners, I saw him grow quick witted and cautious and yet – just as foolish as me with his foolish heart. I know the dream is more than a simple night thing. I know that his fate is written and that he will love and hurt as I did. But perhaps, there is the hope that he will love and hurt and another will love and hurt for him. It is all we can hope in the world, that we can share our pain with others. All I can do is share my pain with him, I think perhaps it will be all that I will leave him.

June 12

Dottie always said I understood things just a breath too late. I understand now I should not have followed the first person to throw a smile at me. I understand I should have run long long ago. I understand that I do love this child in my belly, that I wish he would stay here longer and share my sorrow and be kept away from sorrows of his own making. He shares his pain with me now I think, I think he knows I won’t be here to shield him against it – to share it. So he gives it all to me now as he leaves me, as I leave him. I have not yet screamed but I fear I soon shall. I hate everything that rips him away from me and I hate the man who gave him to me. I know I will not live because I have dreamed it, the sea does not lie in dreams. I will drown in my tears while I birth him. What can I hope but that I will be returned to the sea and that someday after he has loved and hurt he will be given back to me.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is not a second of this that isn't frustrating and angsty I just need you all to know that.

Connor helps Eric wrangle the kids to bed after supper and when they’re tucked in and dozing, Connor wonders what the rest of the evening will be like. He brought Oliver here on a whim and a hope that somehow it would make things better, but he doesn’t know how it could. He doesn’t know if Oliver will speak to him when they are alone again, if he will let him share the warmth of his bed, or so much as look at him.

“You’ve made a mess of things haven’t you,” Eric says, not unkindly.

“When don’t I,” Connor says with a bitter smile.

“Most of the time,” the other man says, “most of the time you are a brilliant man of strategy and business. Most of the time you know just what to say and when to say it.”

“Except when it matters,” Connor whispers.

“Yes,” Eric agrees, “Except when it matters. Except when you really care.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Connor admits feeling like the little boy who ran away from home with a horse and his family name and nothing else.

“Tell him that,” Eric says and lays a hand on Connor’s shoulder when the older man laughs. “It is the only honest thing you can say, Connor. And honesty is the only thing that can solve this type of mess.”

When Connor goes to say goodnight to Gemma her realizes Oliver is nowhere in the house.

“Did he go to bed?” Connor asks.

Gemma looks up at him, disappointed and sad and angry all at once.

“He’s outside gathering his thoughts, Connor Octavius, I should put you in a corner to do the same.”

“I’m not a child anymore Gem,” Connor argues.

“Well then it is time to stop behaving like it,” she snaps. “That is a good kind man who cares for you out there, I can read it in his eyes like a book in golden print.”

“I know that,” Connor says, looking down at his feet in equal parts shame and defeat. “I know.”

“Then fix this,” she says, not softening her tone in the least. “Put aside those stupid thoughts of fortune and success and put that magnificent brain in the service of something that matters. Or would you like to end up like father then? Shunned by his children and married to the human equivalent of a porcelain plate? Do you think mother was that way when she was young and lively and cared? He made her that way, shallow and useless and I will put myself between you and that man if you attempt to do him likewise.”

“Oliver could never become as lifeless as mother, Gem –“

“I have seen broken hearts kill men stone dead, Connor…,” she says as she rushes to him in a half fury, “don’t’ tell me what can and cannot be.”

“What can I do?”

“Fix it,” she says sharply. “I don’t care how but fix it and do so right away.”

After Gemma turns back to her tidying up with an angry swirl of her skirts he grabs a coat from Eric’s rack and heads outside. He can see Oliver just a little ways out in the field, looking nowhere in particular.

When he’s finally close enough to him that he could touch Oliver if he dared, Connor looks down and frowns as he looks back up at his husband.

“You’re barefoot,” he says, as if it weren’t evident.

“I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” Oliver shrugs and says, “Laurel swears by it.”

“And?”

Oliver looks down at his feet and shrugs again. “It’s dry.”

“Did you mean it?”

Oliver wraps his arms around himself though it isn’t cold enough and the wind won’t stir. “Did I mean what?”

“All those things you said,” Connor says quietly. “That there is no us anymore.”

Oliver holds himself tighter and huffs out a breath through his nose. “Was there ever?”

“What about the rest of it,” Connor prompts, emboldened by Oliver’s indecisive answer. “Do you really love me?”

“I won’t say it again,” Oliver whispers harshly.

“Because you don’t feel it?”

“Because you don’t deserve it,” Oliver hisses as he turns, “you don’t deserve to be told how I feel about you or to be reassured that it is disgustingly and sinfully unconditional. That I want to rip it off my skin and be free of it again. I was ready to die alone with my soul intact Connor and now-“

In his rage and passions Oliver has moved closer and closer until they share the same breath and Connor can see every inch of the distress on his beautiful face and it hurts him, it hurts him like a stab would.

“Why do you talk so much of dying,” Connor whispers so close to his lips he can taste his breaths that come ragged and seething. “Why is it always on your mind?”

“I do not know,” Oliver whispers, still hard faced but seemingly unable to move away. “It’s just always on my mind I guess.”

“I would keep it from your thoughts,” Connor whispers back, “even if it is to keep you busy with thoughts of loathing me, I’d keep your thoughts from death and dying and murder and all of those sins.”

“Keep me busy with lies and betrayal instead,” Oliver says, but his voice is breaking slowly, like a wall torn down through the ages by the relentless caress of the sea.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, for he does not know what else to say.

“Will you do it again?”

Connor feels the air leave his lungs because this is it, this is the moment of honest that Eric said he should take. “I haven’t since.”

“But will you do it again,” Oliver says once more, sounding more hurt than Connor can take. He wants to say no, that he’ll never look at someone who isn’t Oliver ever again. But the thought scares him. He is not brave like Oliver, he can’t shout with everything in him that he loves Oliver that it’s all he can do to let his thoughts stray to work or anything else when he is away. He feels it, it clutches at his heart, but he can’t say it.

“I don’t know.”

Oliver makes a small hurt sound, like an animal left cruelly to die of wind and wounds. He looks ready to cry or flee or punch him or all three in the same breath. He wrenches himself away from Connor and marches, quick and trembling away from him.

“I love you,” Connor chokes out, like a bubble that had been trapped in his chest and had burst with the pain in Oliver’s eyes. “I love you, Oliver.”

“Then act like it!” Oliver shouts, half way down the field and mindless of the sleeping cattle and people and whatever god might care to hear. “If that’s what you think you feel then act like it. Because I can’t love for both of us Connor, I’m only human no matter what they say.”

He spins on his bare feet and carries on down the field, away from the house and away from the horses and heading God and Oliver only know where.

Connor can’t do more than stand there, stunned into silence and with his heart in his throat because Connor Walsh always knows the right thing to do and the right thing to say. Always, of course, except when it matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed the angst monster!!!!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile at the Whiteboards...

“What are you doing out here, all barefoot and alone?”

“Enjoying myself,” Laurel says, letting the disdain drip into her tone. “Until this very moment actually.”

“You know a viper might come at your heels,” the man says as he approaches, “walking the way you are.”

“I think one already has,” she says as she turns tucking her hands behind her, “what do you want, Frank?”

“A moment alone,” he says as he comes closer, “which you have been denying me.”

“And with good reason,” she says as she takes a step back and way from the man.

“Bonnie speaks idly when she’s upset,” Frank explains, “and I assure you I’ve never gotten a girl in trouble unless she wanted to get into trouble and I –“

“It doesn’t matter. My interest was….only that. I thought I made myself clear.”

“You’ve made yourself scarce.”

“And wasn’t that clear? Besides I have attentions elsewhere.”

“That man?” Frank laughs and reaches out for her but she takes a large step back. “That stupid boy?”

“He is a man of God and he loves me.”

“A man of God? How surprising with a savage name like his. Do you love him?”

“Of course I do and the only savage I’ve ever met stands before me,” she snaps.            

“Then why are you still arguing with me and what,” he says as he takes one more steps towards her, “Are you hiding there?”

“I am arguing with you because you have no sense of pride or decency, because you won’t leave me alone, and because you ask me what I’m hiding when I may hold whatever I wish however I want now leave,” she says all quickly and in one breath, “before I scream.”

“Let me kiss you,” he says as he takes her around the waist and pulls her close. “Let me, see? I’m asking.”

“What would posses me-“

“I know you still want me, don’t be a stupid silly girl and marry someone convenient. Be with who you really want Laurel,” Frank says softly, just a breath away from her.

“I would,” she says, a slight hardness to her jaw, “but I’ve been warned away from vipers.”

Frank laughs and lets go of her, stepping back with his hands held up as if calming a rearing horse. “Very well,” he says, still laughing. “I’ll go. I won’t even tell my Lady you’ve definitely snatched something from her office.”

“Good,” she says with a hard smile, “it’ll save you her slap for being such an imbecile and a gossip."

Frank shakes his head, laughing louder still and turning back to the Whiteboards with his hands in the air, admitting defeat. Laurel watches him with her chin up and her back straight until the large door swings closed behind him.

“Is he gone?”

Laurel closes her eyes and sighs looking a few feet behind her where Asher lays flat under the sea of grass.

“Yes he’s gone.”

“Okay then,” he says as he pushes himself off the ground, “what do you think then?”

Laurel frowns down at the small portrait she’s pulled from behind her where she’s clutched it just a bit too hard. “Well it isn’t Rebecca.”

“Yes I figured that out,” Asher says with a roll of his eyes, “it was only my first impression.”

“Yes mine also,” she nods as she traces her fingertips over the woman’s shape, “it looks so much like her. Only a lot younger.”

“And darker and for some reason her hair is –“

Laurel holds the painting up to look at it in the brightness of the sun, “It’s very bright for her complexion isn’t it?”

 “It could be a miss coloring,” Asher says, merely guessing.

“The oils are very fine even if they are damaged from being badly stored. I hardly believe they would miss color something that was done with such skill. Besides look,” she says as she points to the different shaded ribbons of the woman’s dress. “They obviously had the colors.”

“Do you think it could be Rebecca’s mother?”

“I suppose,” Laurel says, eyes still intent on the image. “But why would Madame and Bonnie have this? Rebecca was an orphan, if they knew who her parents were –“

“Would they really have said anything?”

Laurel sighs and looks at him. “I understand why you would doubt it but I believe they would. What could they gain from keeping it a secret?”

“I don’t know,” Asher admits.

“She might just be any woman,” Laurel says, but she is frowning like she doesn’t believe herself.

“Should we show it to Wes?”

Laurel hands the painting back to Asher. “I don’t know. Let’s see what we can find out about it before we bring Wes into it.”

Asher tucks the painting into his jacket where he can hide it with simple strap, the thing is so small. He offers Laurel his arm and she takes it. Their bare feet keep rhythm with each other as they make their way towards the house.

“Have you heard from Connor?” Asher asks, once they’ve taken one idle circumference about the house.

Laurel shakes her head. “Why would I have?”

“Because he loves you best,” Asher says with a grin. He leans in close. “Were he inspired by the shapes of women he would have fallen to his knee for you when you came of age. Before then, even.”

“You are a complete idiot,” Laurel laughs though her cheeks blush at the compliment, “Connor would no sooner fall to his knees than fall on his sword.”

“I have it on good authority that many have already fallen on his sword,” Asher says, all seriousness until Laurel barks out in laughs and he joins her.

They are just about the front of the house when the door shoves open and they see Bonnie there, her head held high and her eyes indecipherable as ever.

“Are the two of you planning to run off as well?” Her tone is all displeasure and only very hidden concern. Asher can tell.

“Just the opposite we discussed how much we yearn for our brother,” Laurel calls out, “and Oliver as well. Have you heard anything of his failure or success?”

Bonnie shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve no time for Connor’s torrid romances, I have not forgotten that there is work.”

Asher bites his tongue, every comment and witty remark buried under her rejection and the many nights spent away from her bed. Bonnie’s eyes flutter with disappointment at his silence but all she does is take a despairing breath.   
  
“Asher go fetch your sister and Wes from town on the carriage,” Bonnie finally says, “my lady’s orders.”

“I’ll go with you,” Laurel says brightly, "I haven’t been to town in days."

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Bonnie says. Asher can see her trying to swallow back her words and is almost tempted to step in, but Laurel has always handled herself.

“Has my lady something for me to do?”

Bonnie looks skyward and shakes her head. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Well I’ve just spoken to Frank and he did not seem in need of me,” Laurel says in full innocence, “do you have need of me, ma’am?”

Bonnie closes her eyes and shakes her head, “No Laurel.”

“Well then I see no reason not to accompany my dear Asher,” she says, dripping fake molasses and Asher could kiss her sometimes, if it weren’t he is not inclined.

Bonnie stands there and seethes, Asher envisions, in the pit she’s dug herself.   
  
“As you see fit,” she bites out and collects her skirts in swift violent motions before heading in doors.

“What was that?” Asher asks in whispers as he leans in close to her.

“Trust me,” she says, with a coy smile and a conspiratory look to a fluttering curtain, “I am doing you a favor.”

Asher shakes his head, still smiling. “You’re the viper they always warn you about, aren’t you little sister?”

“I’m a whole week older than you,” she says when she swats his arm, “and I like to think of the matter as a flower and its thorns.”

‘”And what a lovely flower,” Asher smiles, “Connor would have definitely – “

“He would not have!”

“He would have if that had been the way of things," Asher says grinning, "but now he loves that man and he’s made a mess of it.”

“Maybe it’s true that when someone falls in love so completely they inevitably muck things up,” she says softly, “they get scared and push their love away.”

Asher sighs. “You are not speaking of Connor and Oliver any more are you?”

“What a clever little brother,” she says as she eyes the Whiteboards once more. The curtain flutter and Laurel goes up on her bare tip toes and kisses his cheek. “No I was not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COMMENTS I LOVE THEM I LOVE YOU LET'S LOVE TOGETHER!


	23. Chapter 23

It is the fifth time in two weeks that she steps around town with Aiden Walker. He is everything she has ever wanted in a suitor; kind, handsome, and well-bred. Aiden looks down at their held hands and then quickly over his shoulder.

“Do you think your brother would mind?”

Michaela looks down at his offered arm and grins as she links her arm with his. “Wes won’t mind at all.”

Aiden smiles but looks over his shoulder nonetheless. Michaela knows very well that Wes is the worst chaperone known to mankind and yet – he is the best option to be found in her household. Soft-spoken, polite, and widowed. No one would begrudge her the choice. Still, he is probably distracted by any number of things and twenty paces too far behind them.

“I would very much like to call upon you at home,” Aiden says with a smile, “if Mrs. Keating would not mind.”

“I do not think she’d mind at all,” she says, still grinning – not even bothering to correct him, “perhaps when my broth- when Connor returns.”

“Ah yes,” Aiden says as he looks down at their pacing feet, “Connor Walsh isn’t he? Mother – mother speaks of him at times.”

Michaela raises her eyebrows. “Does she?”

“Yes,” he nods, “she said it was…I’m sorry I shouldn’t speak of such things.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Please, I want us to have every confidence.”

He smiles kindly and nods. “Well she speaks of his family at times, is all. How sad his parents seem since he has been gone.”

Michaela knows she must mind her words, everything is so fragile still. “I am sure their relations will thaw in time.”

Aiden inclines his head agreeably, obviously anxious to change the subject. He speaks of her beauty at length and asks if she has read anything noteworthy of late. It is a perfect afternoon, until the wide shadow of a long hat is cast over them.

“Aiden,” a matronly woman says, her gems glinting in the setting sun. “I want you to disengage from this woman immediately.”

Aiden’s arm clutches hers all the tighter as Michaela’s heart skips to her throat.

“Mother?”

“Aiden I do not wish to repeat myself,” the woman says tightly, “come with me this instant.”

“Mother I do not –“

“Is something the matter?” Wes says, his voice quiet and firm as he stands just an inch behind her. Michaela is glad for it, for some solid strength as her perfect day crumbles.

The woman eyes Wes. “None of your business, boy.”

“Miss Pratt is very much my business. I am her chaperone and everything that involves her is my concern,” he says, his voice louder.

The woman glares at him stiffly and then turns that glare towards Michaela herself. “I’ve been called upon by Mrs. Millstone this morning,” she says with a tone of finality, “your company is not acceptable for my son.”

“Mother this is unconscionable behavior,” Aiden hisses quietly.

“What is impossible is that you are still attached to this woman’s arm. Aiden, this girl is unsuitable. Come along.”

Aiden’s arm loosens in Michaela’s grip and her heart falls between her feet. “But-“

His mother only glares more hotly and he lets go of Michaela all together. He turns to her with an apologetic face. “I will call upon you soon, I am so terribly sorry –“

“Aiden,” the woman says with strength but without shouting. The man jumps and kisses Michaela’s hand distractedly before scurrying away. Michaela manages to stand, chin high and ramrod straight until the both of them are far down the lane and out of sight. Then and only then does she allow her body to sag against Wes.

Wes kisses the top of her head, his fingers holding her shaking arms. “Keep your chin up,” he whispers, “we’ll be home soon.”

“She has eyes everywhere,” Michaela whispers as she watches dejectedly after Aiden.

“Then do not give her the satisfaction,” Wes whispers back rather fiercely.

Just as he manages to make her turn away, Laurel and Asher make their way up to them – halting in their steps when they take in their expressions.

\---

“What happened?” Laurel asks immediately.

Asher steps forward and rest his hands above Wes’s on Michaela’s arms. She is obviously shaken, somewhere between dejected and furious. “Tell me.”

“Your mother,” she says, as spitefully as her choked breath can manage, “she’s done it again.”

Asher closes his eyes and pulls Michaela into his arms. She struggles, batting at him until he squeezes her harder still and she relents, a small shaky breath escaping her.

“Mrs. Walker came personally,” Wes explains, “and escorted Aiden away.”

Laurel steps forward and pulls Michaela away from Asher. They look at each other. Asher recognizes the silent conversation in their eyes. He has seen it before, between the both of them and Bonnie. Even at times between the lot of them and Madame herself. It is the silent conversation of brilliant women with buried pasts. In a moment Michaela has wiped away her blossoming tears and holds herself up once again.

“Did he speak up?” Laurel asks.

Michaela shakes her head miserably.

“Did he defend you? Stand up for you both?”

Michaela shakes her head no once again.

“Then that is not the father of your children,” Laurel says with finality. “Come home, Madame has need of you.”

Asher watches them from a few paces back the entire way home, his feet feeling the hot dusted ground as he keeps pace with Wes.

“Will you see her,” Wes says softly, “your mother?”

Asher shrugs shortly. “I won’t go seeking her out.”

“And if she comes?”

“If she comes,” Asher says, “she will have to face the consequences of what she has done to Madame’s ward. If she survives that I may come down and bid her good day.”

Wes lays an arm over Asher’s shoulders. “You’re a good man, Asher.”

Asher snorts quietly. “I have disgraceful parents.”

“That also,” Wes agrees with a soft laugh, “that is true.”

Inside Lady Keating’s study they stop short at the door. They stare as if seeing ghosts until Asher pushes forward.

“Connor! Since when are you returned?”

Both Connor and Oliver stand by Madame, each to one side of her and standing stock still.

Madame clears her throat. “We can have pleasantries later. Asher you are excused. Everyone else, sit.”

“But…” Asher begins to protest vaguely, but one glance from Madame has him bowing slightly and sighing as he leaves the study.

They take their seats, their usual spots about the office, and it only takes a moment once they are sure Asher is well away before she extends her hand towards Oliver.

The man looks gaunt and sad, even sadder than he has as they had driven him out of his family home. Connor does not look at all the better.

Olive reaches into his jacket and hands a packet to Lady Keating who in turn slaps the packet of pages onto the desk in front of her.

“Rebecca Sutter’s journal, decrypted and accounted for.”

“Was there anything of …importance?” Michaela asks, her voice panicked as she glances up at Oliver.

“There is everything,” Keating says, “in vivid detail. It is incriminating of everyone in this room. I assure you Mr. Hampton is the very least of our worries.”

“What should our worries be then?” Wes asks, his voice choked and quiet as his eyes stare at the packet of pages with something akin to devotion.

“Mr. Hampton?” Keating prompts.

Oliver clears his throat. “The pages were encrypted in Sister’s Secret, a key used by Carnelian nuns to write to their lovers. But what is of most…danger, is the journal itself. It is a duet.”

“A duet?” Laurel asks. “Like a tune?”

“Like a carbon copy,” Connor says, finally speaking though his voice sounds rough – as if he has shouted or kept silent for too long. “Each page had a carbon twin.”

“There is an identical manuscript to every page in this journal,” Oliver clarifies, “and every twin is missing but one.”

Keating pulls out the original journal, something they had all seen Rebecca carry about. The last page, as she opens it, has a thick original and an onionskin copy beneath.

Wes stares at it, his eyes clouded. “What does it say?”

Keating pulls out one of the pages of the packet in front of her, wordlessly handing it to Laurel.

Laurel takes it in a shaking hand and reads.

_The blow will come and I do not know from where, but it will come. I cannot run, as Lila could not, as Our Lord knows only how many others before us and after us. We are all born to die for the curse of our sinful birth. E is my only hope for justice, justice for me and my sin-born kin. May God have Mercy._


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the timeline is a bit confusing, the first bit is between Chp 21 and Chp 23, the rest continues from there.

The days that followed Connor’s confession were art. Oliver, it turns out, is a fantastic performer. Gemma was shameless about wanting them happy, so Oliver acted happy. He would show up at breakfast each morning with a smile, twinkle his eyes in Connor’s direction, play with the children, laugh with Eric and Gemma. Everything was right. But each night after dinner he sat in a corner of Connor’s room, paging wordlessly through the first book he got a hold of and waiting. He waited until the lights were out and the halls were quiet and then left the bedroom without a backwards glance at Connor. He tried to follow him, the second night, but lost his way in lands he owns and did not see his husband until morning. Now, tonight for the third night, Oliver sits in the corner of the room – ignoring Connor with all of his might.

The book in his hands is Rebecca’s journal, the book he had confessed to be deciphering under Madame’s orders. He stares at it with avid attention and Connor, tired of pleading for tonight, watches him. He watches him as the man gasps and starts flipping through the pages, running his fingers down them and turning pale.

“I’m an idiot,” he whispers.

“What is it?”

Oliver looks up, his silent torture forgotten. “There’s a copy. Connor, there is a copy of this entire journal.”

“What?”

Oliver rushes over and takes a seat beside him on the bed, prying the journal open until the sewing was obvious. “Do you see those ripped pages? Do you see how the material is different?”

“They’re –“

“Copies,” Oliver insists, “The last page was stuck to its own twin but now they’ve come apart and I can see, there are twin pages to every single one and they’ve been ripped off with precision. There’s a duplicate of this.”

“That’s….but she knew everything…”

“Yes,” Oliver whispers, “we have to go back immediately – whomever has this could have already gone to the authorities or – or be planning some form of blackmail we…we have to warn everyone. We have to –“

Connor takes the journal from Oliver’s hands and casts it aside, cupping Oliver’s cheek. “Oliver will you –“

“Oh there isn’t time for this,” Oliver groans as he stands from the bed and heads towards the drawers, “get dressed we have to leave immediately.”

“Oliver can we speak about this, about us, about everything?”

Oliver scoffs as he packs and throws clothes at Connor. “You want to talk about us? What’s next? A proper marriage in a church?”

The taunt stings, he remembers mockingly asking the same of Oliver, what seems like an age ago.

“Why do you care then, why are you so frantic if –“

“Listen,” Oliver says, turning on his heel and all but hissing, “I won’t fuel your own adoration not one more time. You know how I feel about you, I imagine you know how much I’ve come to regret those unchangeable feelings but the truth of it is you’re mine to hate to love until death do us part and I won’t see you hang. Now shut up, Connor, and get dressed.”

With everyone still awake they say hurried goodbyes that worry Gemma and startle the children, Connor will have to come back and give them some excuse, but tonight they ride hard and fast for the Whiteboards.

-

As soon as everyone is told and sent off until further notice Oliver feels his shoulders fall. His part is done, he’s done his best.

“I’m sorry I don’t know more,” he says nonetheless.

Keating inclines her head. “You’ve done more for us than you know. Thank you, Mr. Hampton.”

Oliver does not protest the name, only glances over at Connor who is standing, looking small and quiet in the imposing study. It aches to see him.

“I have a request,” Oliver says, allowing himself the familiarity for once as he takes a seat in front of her.

“I cannot separate you from the incrimination,” she says softly, “that is out of my hands if it comes to it.”

Oliver shakes his head and tries to keep his eyes steady and away from Connor.

“There is a small structure past the creek, where the town says your bounds are set. I found it once while exploring on my own,” he explains.

She nods. “I know it. It is quite disused.”

“I could repair it,” Oliver says in a hurry, “if only I could have it for myself.”

Connor, quietly distressed until this point, bursts forward. “What? You can’t be serious.”

Keating does not seem as fazed. “You would like to live outside of the main house?”

Oliver nods, trying harder still to ignore Connor as he hovers over him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t see why not,” she says calmly.

“Madame,” Connor says desperately, “he is my husband.”

“Yes,” she says without looking towards her ward, “he is.”

“He belongs with me,” Connor says fiercely before kneeling beside Oliver, “Ollie please.”

“He belongs where he chooses,” she says, her eyes keeping his – helping him away from the temptation of Connor’s eyes.

“I would like my own living,” Oliver says, closing his eyes, “I won’t be a nuisance.”

“I know so,” Keating says, “and if that is your wish-“

“I am your legal son,” Connor shouts carelessly, betrayal deep in his voice, “you wouldn’t-“

“So is he, Mr. Walsh. And I owe him every protection I owe you,” she says, with an angry snap. “Don’t ever presume to overstep me again.”

She turns back to Oliver, now little more than a shaking body on his chair. “The living is yours, Mr. Hampton. I do not mind. Make it tidy again, a merit to our home. But I will expect you here for every meal and meeting without fail.”

“Yes ma’am,” Oliver says quietly, “thank you, my lady.”

She smiles, true and sad, before looking up at Connor’s stricken face. “I’ve taught you to live with the consequence of your choice haven’t I, Mr. Walsh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he breathes out, his voice caught and broken.

“Good,” she says firmly. “That is what you will do.”

“Oliver,” Connor pleads again, “what more can I do – I –“

Oliver laughs soft and bitter. “What more can you do? Let me some peace, Connor,” he says as he falls to Dottie’s old words, “Let me alone.”

“Ollie,” Connor all but whimpers.

“Enough,” Keating says as she stands and leans on her desk, “no one in this household will grovel so, Mr. Walsh. Pick yourself up. Out of here, both of you.”

Dismissed, they both exit the study. The hall is deserted, everyone else panicking or wallowing no doubt.

“Tell me you aren’t serious,” Connor whispers, making one more attempt at taking Oliver’s hand.

Oliver closes his eyes, remembers himself, and then nods. He turns towards the kitchen, towards the back door that is closest to the creek. “I will see you at supper.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut at last, smut at last. (I'm not a very explicit writer, but I aim to please).

As he has for every day the past week and a half, Connor sits at the breakfast table and glares with hell fire at everyone around him until the mesh door creaks open and Oliver steps in. Then Connor sits at the breakfast table and glares with hell fire at his toast.

“Your project is coming along beautifully,” Lady Keating says as he takes a seat, “I rode by it yesterday evening.”

“Thank you, Madame. I’m nearly done with the inside as well,” Oliver says, “and I guess the final touch will be a coat or two of paint.”

“Don’t see why,” Connor mutters as he viciously spreads butter, “you have to sleep inside a god-dammed construction site. Don’t even have a bed-“

“I’ve always liked the outdoors. So far it has been a very sturdy tent,” Oliver says to Wes although the man had been concentrating on his newspapers.

“It will be lovely,” Michaela says, “and I’d love to help give a woman’s touch indoors.”

“I’d love that,” Oliver says pleasantly as Connor slams down the pot of coffee after a refill.

“Temper yourself,” Bonnie hisses at Connor, quietly though it is certain everyone can hear.

“How about you stay after supper for a drink tonight,” Asher says to Oliver, although his glance roams over to Connor with eyes full of pity. “It must be so lonely there at night.”

“It’s very peaceful,” Oliver says.

Asher huffs and suddenly Wes bounces in his seat with a yelp, no doubt viciously kicked.

“You should join us, Oliver,” Wes says hurriedly, “we miss your company.”

“I miss your reading,” Laurel adds, “it was always so soothing before bed.”

Connor has gone still, unsure if he is meant to speak or hold his silence.

“I will stay after supper,” Oliver relents, “if I am not too exhausted.”

-

Connor watches from the corner, curled with a book he has no intention of reading, as Oliver reads calmly to Laurel and everyone else in the room. He does have a lovely soothing voice, but it does nothing to calm Connor. Instead it makes his heart clench and unclench with every soft word, with every tiny curl of Oliver’s lips as he reads something with multiple meanings that he catches onto all too quickly.

When everyone retires to bed Connor takes his chance to approach his husband in private for the first time in days.

“Let me walk you back,” he ventures, scratching at the back of his own neck like a boy.

“I can make my way perfectly,” Oliver says softly as he packs his book into a satchel.

“I know,” Connor says just as quietly, laying a hand on Oliver’s arm so gently it would take nothing to knock it off. “Let me come anyway.”

Oliver looks about the room, dimmed to two candles and devoid of witnesses. “Alright.”

Oliver’s cabin is far enough away that it would be simpler to ride than walk, but Oliver never does – Connor has watched him – so they make their way on foot.

The moon is new and the night is dark, but Oliver seems to know where he is going without doubt and Connor follows, also without doubt.

“I haven’t put a board yet,” Oliver says without looking back when they begin to hear the sounds of the creek, “but there’s a stretch of stones.”

“I trust you,” Connor says, because it seems important to admit so. He cannot see Oliver’s expression, but he can feel Oliver’s hand on his chest when the creek sounds close. He tugs Connor close by the buttons of his shirt and their breath mingles in silence.

“Put a hand on my waist and the other on my shoulder,” Oliver whispers as he turns his back to Connor, “I’ll go slowly.”

Connor licks his lips and follows orders, making sure to pull himself close, chest to back. He gasps as they take the first step onto stone together, because it feels as if the earth falls from under their feet – that the tiny spot where they share footing is all there is. When they make it across the creek with nothing but splashes of cool water on the hems of their trousers, Connor knows he should let go and step back. Instead he leans forward, his lips hovering over the pulse on Oliver’s neck.

“May I come in,” he says rather than asks against his skin. Oliver nods slowly, a hand covering Connor’s own at his waist.

-

Oliver turns, perhaps too quickly. He takes a newfound pleasure in startling Connor. “But tonight you come into my home,” he says quiet and firm, “into my makeshift bed. You’re coming to me, Connor. Do you understand?”

Connor’s mouth is a little bit open in awe and his eyes are wide as well, he can see now his eyes are accustomed to the light. But he nods, after a pause, he nods quick and often before throwing himself forward and kissing him. It’s biting and begging and deep and Oliver lets him, but best of all he fights back – bites back and sucks Connor’s lip into his mouth to tease and torture.

He’s rougher than he needs to be ridding Connor of his shirt, tugging him forward by the belt. But when he finally pulls him down onto the mess of pillows and blankets on his unpolished floors, his hands have turned gentle. Maybe it’s the vulnerability of Connor all bare to the night air and Oliver’s eyes while he himself is still dressed or maybe it’s something else. When he kisses him again and trails his hand down Connor’s body as if there were words only his fingertips could read, he makes it comforting like a promise.

“Oliver I –“

“You’ll be quiet,” Oliver says, voice still soft and gentle, “for once.”

Connor licks his lips once again, a nervous or excited gesture, then nods.

He straddles Connor’s hips and goes about removing his vest without taking his eyes from Connor’s. “It happened fast, I know. That’s all I know. I don’t know if you’re guilty or not, if you care either way…I know I don’t. Not anymore. I only care about you, and about this. Does that make me a bad man?”

Connor shakes his head, swallowing thickly as if something were dry-caught in his throat. “No.”

“Then tell me what I want to hear,” he whispers, “I don’t much care if it’s a lie. Not tonight, anyway.”

Connor leans up, coming up to face him and dipping his stealthy hands into Oliver’s half unbuttoned shirt.

“I don’t want anyone else,” he says fiercely, eyes burning as if he were fevered, “I didn’t want him.”

“So you won’t – “

“I won’t,” Connor says, almost in a whimper, “blast a case, blast this whole place. I won’t, not anyone but you. I swear.”

Oliver watches him for a flinch or tell, but all he can notice is the beating of his own heart against Connor’s palm. “Are you lying?”

Connor’s eyes drift down to Oliver’s lips and back up to meet his gaze. “You’d know.”

Oliver thinks he might be right, thinks he might know, but he’s certain that just now he wouldn’t care either way.

“Turn around,” he whispers, trying not to smile back at the pleased smirk on Connor’s lips as he follows command.

He takes ages with Connor, teasing and working his body like a piece of wood to be carved, until the man is a mewling mess of gasped out threats and sobbed declarations. When he has him, has him with their bodies molded together and his hand on his heart and his mouth at the heaving pulse of his neck he knows – he was born damned in some way, something that has pulled him to melancholy and self-pity since childhood, but there is sweeter damnation. If he must be cursed, he’ll choose this torment, the torture of their bodies moving as one and Connor’s wordless sounds and the maddening heat and chill of them intermingling.

“Why did you move here?” Connor asks later, when they lay idle on the blanket nest of his own making.

“Because I could,” Oliver answers, as he finds it is the only response he has, “and because I had to.”

“Will you come back to me?”

“No,” Oliver says, as he traces shapes on Connor’s hip, “but you may always come to me. And I will protect you.”

“Do you mean-“

“I mean I will protect you,” Oliver whispers, “from anything that comes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments guys, I can't stress how much I ACTUALLY NEED THEM.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're BACK!!!!
> 
> So that was the longest fic hiatus EVER (if you've never touched the HP fandom in your life, that is). But I am back and so happy about it. Hope someone is still reading this!

The house is warm as ever with the air thick and humid and hard to breathe in, but a stream of it comes from some crack on the ceiling and it howls so that no one in the whole of it can find sleep. Wes finds himself in Rebecca’s room because the air runs cooler and he imagines he can still find the smell of her here, on the pillows and the curtains and inside the floorboards.

His gaze is set out onto the grassland that surrounds them, looking out to Oliver’s lit lanterns in his tiny cottage and beyond still into the deep dark.

_You said you loved me._

“I know you’re looking for her,” he hears from just behind him.

“I wouldn’t be much of a husband if I didn’t, my Lady,” he says without turning back.

“She’s gone,” she says plainly. “Wes. Rebecca is dead.”

“You don’t know that,” he whispers, “any more than I do. You’re just as happy to believe as everyone else, because it would be easy, wouldn’t it? It would be good.”

“It would be as it is,” she says sternly. “After everything we’ve been through and everything we’ve managed. And that poor boy...”

“Annalise –“

“Wesley,” she snaps, grabbing hold of his elbow and tugging him to face her. “Wherever she may be in this world or another, that’s where we will leave her.”

“That’s where I should be as well,” Wes declares in a harsh whisper.

“Even dead?”

“Even so,” he answers.

“Rebecca was a case, Wes. She was a problem to be solved. And I accepted it when you took her into your heart and brought her into my house and into our lives. But don’t you dare drag her back dead or alive after everything she did; no matter what your pathetic romanticism demands.”

Wes can’t find it himself to speak to that, so he changes the subject swiftly instead.

“What did you really want Oliver for? You already knew about the duplicates and you must have had enough of an idea of what the journal said. What do you really want him here for?”

She’s at his shoulder now, a hand on the back of his neck in some semblance of a reassuring gesture before she’s gone with a swish of her skirts.

-

Two flights down the stairs Michaela tries to find some relief from the heat, chains creaking where the porch swing sways backwards and forward. On the floor beside her Asher is already half asleep and unburdened by the oppressive heat.

She thinks about giving up on her lazy swinging when, eyes still shut, he speaks.

“Do you think – what would have happened if things had been different? If father were a proper man.”

“You mean if he…”

Asher sighs. “If he weren’t a cad about you, yes.”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I suppose your mother would have an easier time of making my life hell if I were under her roof. Maybe even … take it out on my own mother. She would have you know…”

“I know,” Asher says as he extends his hand towards her. She looks at it with suspicion but after two swings she takes it.

“She’s safe,” he reminds her. “Maybe you should visit.”

“Maybe,” she says, though they both know she won’t mean it come morning.

“Why have you been thinking about all this,” she finally asks after a few minutes of silence.

His hand twitches in hers.

“I just don’t think I quite belong here,” he says. “Kind of snuck at the end. The whole package deal and –“

“You shouldn’t kid yourself,” Michaela whispers, “that you pressured my lady into anything she didn’t wish. Even if all she wanted was your name, even if that is the only weapon you yield –“

“I don’t want to be here if it is,” he confesses in a hushed whisper. “Micheala can’t you understand that? I’m here every day surrounded by all of you. All of you so talented and smart and I don’t want to live out my life knowing everyone is… ashamed.”

They’re quiet for another long moment until finally Michaela stands from the porch swing and falls to kneel beside him.

“You’re an idiot,” she whispers, “that is what everyone knows of you. That is the best thing possible for you Asher, because no one ever expects you. The real you. The man who always knows what the right thing is and isn’t afraid to point it out. You put together the things are so much more convenient to ignore and you shine a candle to them so that the world may see. And no one, no one at all, should ever make you feel like they’re ashamed.”

“You are a good sister,” he says as he smiles, his eyes still closed. “Who needs parents with the pair we make?”

“Not us,” she sighs, as she lays down beside him with her hair fanned over the porch. “Certainly not us.”

-

Breakfast is a quiet affair that morning. When Wes pours Rebecca’s cup there are no raised eyebrows or quiet smirks. It’s rare for those to appear now after all this time, but today’s silence makes the absence more obvious.  
“Has there been a death in the house?” Frank says as he takes a seat at his usual place.

“Connor didn’t come home last night,” Laurel notes as she hovers her cup near her lips and draws it away without taking a sip.

“That’s good news,” Asher says brightly. “Isn’t it?”

“It sounds like their business, actually,” Bonnie mutters.

“One would suppose,” Laurel answers, her gaze far off as she looks out the window. “But I worry.”

“You often worry,” Michaela sighs with a shrug. “Like you’re his mother.”

“I rather liked the silence,” Lady Keating says from the end of the table. “If you’ve all nothing valuable to say.”  

“I’ve something valuable to say,” Wes says as he looks up from his breakfast. “The Stangards are back in town. Come to stay, I’ve heard.”

Lady Keating raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of coffee.

“Well that bodes well for town but I don’t see –“

“I thought maybe I should visit,” Wes says. “Rebecca was such good friends with Lila. I don’t know if I ever properly expressed my sympathies.”

“Wes,” Laurel says softly, “that doesn’t –“

“That’s a terrible idea,” Michaela says plainly, “they won’t see you.”

“Maybe not,” he says with a nod. “Madame’s name never opened doors with them. But Oliver. Oliver might.”

Madame looks at him, calm and intent for nearly a minute before she closes her eyes and breathes in the steam of her coffee.

Finally she opens her eyes and smiles, too pleasantly for anyone’s comfort. “Might as well we get some use of the Hampton name.”

“Might as well,” Wes agrees.

“You’ll take Oliver of course and care not to be imposition to the Stangards, Wes,” she says with a coat of warning. “You can’t expect they’ve finished mourning their child. That isn’t how it tends to go.”

-

“Take Oliver where?”

The table turns in unison to the see Connor and Oliver enter. Connor knows when Madame is up to something even if he can never figure out what. He’d be dead if he couldn’t.

“A social call,” Madame says lightly.

Instinctively, Connor takes Oliver’s hand.

“I should go then,” Connor says as casually as he can. “It would be unseemly not to accompany my husband.”

“I don’t think the Stangards will stand on so much ceremony,” she says, as the whole table sits tensely between them. “I don’t want to overwhelm them.”

“I’ll be quiet then,” Connor says, holding on to Oliver’s hand as if for his life.

“You will be and you will be at home and at work when you are.”

“Connor I’ll be fine,” Oliver says quietly beside him.

They stare at each other for a long moment before she takes in a deep breath. “Oliver and Wes will go visit the Stangards. You may accompany them into town but you will not visit with them. I’ll give you something more productive to do.”

This time it’s Oliver who squeezes back and then tugs Connor along towards the table where their usual seats wait.

“I wouldn’t know what to say to the Stangards,” Oliver says once they’ve both taken a seat. “Except offer my condolences of course.”

“I’ll make an introduction,” Wes offers quickly.

“I don’t know how seeing as you never met them,” Michaela says.

“None of us have,” Asher adds. “They like to keep to themselves and not brush elbows with us.”

“Still Rebecca knew them,” Wes argues.

“You’re only guessing,” Laurel says as she bites her lip. “Aren’t you? Did she ever say she’d met them?”

“She was Lila’s friend,” Wes says sharply.

“That is what she always said,” Bonnie says with no intonation at all.

Connor finally decides to step in when Oliver’s hand starts tapping a nervous beat on the table.

“The Stangards are old blood,” he says as he leans over the table and grabs some still warm toast. “They’ll be graceful and polite until you leave, so that’s all that matters. But of course if you prefer me to go with you -”

“If Madame thinks I’ll be alright,” Oliver says as his fingers stop tapping. “Then I am sure that I will be.”

Connor wants to tell him not to believe such things even if he says them, not to trust anyone, not even Connor himself. Instead, he takes Oliver’s hand in his again and pulls it up for his lips kiss just as Oliver meets his gaze.

“Of course you will,” he says with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Safe as houses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, pleaseeeeeee I'm starving for them!


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot it thickens!

They say, eventually, the pain will die down into a low thrum – something easily ignored like the howls of wind at night and the morning chill. They say that to her often so that things will be easier to manage. Life should stop, she thinks, but it does not. Books must be kept in order and servants must be kept in check, luncheons and dinners must still be planned and yes, eventually, parties must be held. Her daughter is dead and the world, very briefly, cared. Now her precious girl, her one gift from the Lord, is only a harsh whispered warning as other mothers with living children grasp their wrists too tightly and warn them about the swamp.

“Mrs. Stangard,” a maid calls softly from the door to her parlor.

“Yes?” she asks shortly, for she has forgotten the girl’s name.

“There are two young gentlemen come calling, ma’am. Wishing to have a word with you.”

It takes a moment, as it tends to now, for the sounds of words to make sense to her.

“Yes,” she says slowly, “yes please send them in.”  
She quite forgets all about it until there is a polite knock and she turns again, a bit startled by the sight of them. Two boys, foreign, dressed as they should be with their heads slightly bowed.

“Mrs. Stangard,” one says, “thank you for receiving us. I am Oliver Hampton and this is my brother-in-law Wes Gibbins.”

She must stare too long for they start to shuffle in that nervous way that children do.

“Of course,” she says as she remembers herself, “of course have a seat. Hampton – I quite think I know your name. You do not…forgive me I know your mother but you look not like her.”

“No,” the boy says with a hint of resignation. “No Mrs. Hampton is my stepmother. I’m told I look like my father.”

“I do not have the pleasure,” she says as she turns her eyes to the other boy. “You look very familiar.”

“Yes, ma’am my – my late wife was a friend of your daughter’s.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” she says, the words feel strange on her tongue after so many times in her ears.

“And I for yours,” he says softly.

“We wanted to offer our condolences,” the Hampton boy says, “and I hope our this is not too painful a subject but we were wondering if … if Miss Lila ever mentioned Wes’ wife, Rebecca.”

The word, her name, sends a chill down her spine. Of course, the world does not care that her baby is dead, floating like a leaf upon the water. But Rebecca-

“Oh she must have,” she says mildly, “it is only I – my memory is quite fogged these days.”

“I understand,” the young widower says, an edge of eagerness to his voice, “but if there is anything at all you can tell us. They were so dear to each other and my wife’s passing was such a mystery. Anything you could say that might illuminate us…”

“What was her name again?”

She must look a frazzled fright the way they stare at her.

“Rebecca,” her husband says appearing at her side. “Rebecca Sutter. She was a street urchin, always skipping stones with Lila when she was a child. But that was many years ago.”

“They were close until Lila’s passing I know it,” the grieved boy insists.

“Well Lila didn’t speak on the girl since she kept the good sense to keep her boots clean of mud,” her husband says in clipped tones. “Now if you’ll excuse us we do have a luncheon to make an appearance at.”

After a moment of hard stares between him and the visitors, the boys nod and take their leave.

-

Wes takes off the minute they are down the lane, taking a left and begging Oliver go meet Connor on his own. He does and finds his husband in a fabric shop, eying the wares with much more interest than anyone ought to stare at fabric with.

“Connor,” he says just to call his attention.

The other man startles, still holding an edge of what looks like velvet.

“I didn’t think you’d be finished so soon,” he says, clutching the fabric more tightly, “can you believe the price of this? And I’ve seen just now a woman take a whole bolt. I have to speak to Eric about what he’s charging.”

“Connor why didn’t Madame want you to join us at the Stangards?”

Connor lets go of the fabric and brushes at the folds of his jacket. “Generally where Wes goes I don’t, our personalities are not to the same tastes.”

“You’re too brash for them?”

“To cold,” he says, with a bitter looking smile. “How did it go?”

“Strangely,” he tells him, blushing only slightly as Connor lays a hand at the small of his back and guides him out of the shop.

“Strangely, well that’s all par for the course in these parts and you know that already.”

“Yes well, just that sort of strange. Mrs. Stangard said she hardly remembered Lila speaking of Rebecca and Mr. Stangard said she hadn’t done so in years.”

“And what’s strange about that? I certainly stopped trying to interest my parents in the minutia of my life. Hell, I left all together before I grew a beard.”

“Yes, but they’re lying,” he whispers.

“How would you know?”

“I’m very good at knowing, Connor, with everyone that isn’t you. Bonnie lies about ignoring Asher, Asher lies about not missing his father, Michaela lies about wanting to be married, Laurel lies about why she was sent here. Meanwhile Wes and Madame lie about everything, and I can tell – Connor. I’m very good at telling.”

“Except with me,” Connor replies softly.

“Yes, except with you,” Oliver says, taking his hand to show he isn’t angry about that just now, “so believe me when I say they were both lying. You could see the recognition and worse, the fear, when we mentioned Rebecca’s name.”

“What do you think it means?”

Oliver shrugs. “I guess it means Rebecca means more to them than we’ll know.”

“You’re not giving up already, are you?”

“No,” he says smiling, “not yet.”

“Why do you care so much,” Connor asks sincerely, “you never knew Rebecca. You don’t know what she was like.”

“Perhaps,” he concedes, “but … as much I tried to stay away from folk talks I’m still a bit of a child about these things. I just can’t… can’t help but feel there’s something tying me to her.”

“Well cut if off,” Connor says, rounding on him and grabbing hold of his elbow, “sever it.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do,” he answers calmly, “will you help me?”


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHOW'S BACK I'M BACK BABES

Oliver sits on the polished floors of his self-made home and stares at the artful array of evidence in front of him, begging it to speak to him in a code he’ll understand. As the weeks pass he feels the presence of those graves at his back, of the victims – for he is sure now both girls are victims – keeping watch at the foot of their bed. He swears he sees them with their long hair hanging limp and their eyes staring in wait as Connor sleeps calmly on his chest. It feels like an obsession or a calling. It seems that whatever his mind and soul had been made of before he crossed the door of the Whiteboards, whatever that had been was long gone. Now his thoughts and spirit were made only of two needs, one that clouded his mind like a storm and another that made his blood run like hot honey; the need to solve the unsolvable and the need of Connor.

“You should come back to bed,” Connor whispers, his breath chilling against Oliver’s bare shoulder in the heavy heat of the night, “you’ll lose what eyesight you have left.”

Oliver nods but he does not turn. He knows the clues are trying to speak to him, he can nearly hear them scream, but he does not know what they say. It’s something about the cipher, something he’s missed and he knows that if he just waits…

“I will,” Oliver says distractedly, “just as soon as I –“

“Solve two murders and prove them in a court of law? Not tonight, Ollie. Come away to bed now,” Connor says against his ear, “don’t you know it frosts over without you in it?”

Oliver turns, knowing full well he is being played like a fiddle but unable to resist the tune.

“Does it now?”

“It does,” Connor smiles, eyes on Oliver’s lips, “I’ll catch my death if you don’t come away with me right now.”

“You think I’ve lost my mind,” Oliver says, turning back to the spread of coded text, translation, journal cuttings, and more.

“No more than is usual for the marshlands,” Connor says, the teasing and mirth flushed out of his voice. He reaches out and he does not have to ask again. Oliver takes his hand and lets himself be pulled away into the small bedroom, into the bed that Wes had given them. It was Rebecca’s, it had been theirs, and Connor refused it at first. Oliver understood the gesture, the slight manipulation in the gift. Wes was happy for his brother and Oliver, but he did not want whatever joy they found to leave Rebecca forgotten. Like a full cup of coffee at the breakfast table, a painting staring down in judgment, or the bed they took into their home – she was everywhere. Rebecca was in everything and with her so was Lila.

Oliver climbs into bed beside Connor, who for all his teasing and tactic curled up beside Oliver like a cat and with no more lust than dew on a blade of grass, fell to sleep beside Oliver.

Would that he could follow Connor into a restful sleep – at least on the nights that his husband did not wake in a cold sweat – but it had been weeks since Oliver had last slept without a thought running constant behind his closed eyes. Who had killed those two young beloved women, and why had such a treachery been done?

-

Tonight he swears he sees them at the foot of his bed, one drenched in swamp water and the other sullied in damp earth. He sees their hair like curtains, red and black, like the omens of aberration that they are. Wes doubts his wife’s death, Connor is certain, but he wonders if he ever sees her as plainly as Connor sees her now – dull eyed and pale as the Whiteboards.

He wants to speak to them but he can’t, he can’t move much less form words. So he is left to stare at them in his paralyzed state and think the words at them. _Why do you linger? Why do you haunt me? I did not kill you, do you even know who did?_

Connor dreams are fitful these days, though his body lays calmly whenever Oliver is at his side. As soon as Oliver left, for a cup of water or to pour over the scripts of dead girls, the sounds came again. Every so often he would hear the wind howl through the grass that he had to give him back, that he wasn’t his to have. The voice was disembodied, neither male nor female, and it felt too real – it felt too close. So he got up, stood up, went after Oliver each night and begged him back to bed with him because the noises and the voices never came when he listened to the sound of Oliver’s breath instead.

He remembers being thirteen when he first realized, he had not just moved a few miles away from Gemma and Eric, not simply shifted in the geography of the land. Moving to the marshlands, living in the Whiteboards – the world didn’t move quite the same, didn’t follow quite the same laws of nature. Everyone knew it, no one spoke it. If someone met a ghost or a devil on the road after sundown, everyone knew it of course, but no one spoke it.

He wishes he could speak it now, he wishes he could tell Oliver about the demands he hears when he sets to rest, he wishes he could tell them about the shadow of skirts that swish in phantom movements around every corner of the Whiteboards. But Oliver is consumed by it all in his own way and Connor all he knows is that Oliver is his to protect. He recalls the way Oliver swore to be the one to protect Connor, but the river runs the other way. He knows the vengeful spirits, the jealous angels, covet his lover – not him. He knows the screams he hears at night scream for his husband and so Connor, he rarely does sleep.

When the dawn breaks, Connor sifts his fingers through Oliver’s hair and smiles. He does not know how or why or if he has had any hand in it at all, but he feels he has done the right thing once again. He has kept a vigil, of sorts, and seen Oliver to wake. Never one for vocation or destiny, Connor wonders if this was what was meant for him all along. Once his Lady had to him he would be the first to figure it out, why she had chosen them, why they were all here. Now he doesn’t know about knowing the mind of Annalise Keating, but he thinks if there is anything guiding the path of his feet and the turns of his life it has brought him to this – to standing like a wall made of a single tainted soul against the world beyond the world, to protect the one thing most precious to him on this godless earth.


	29. Chapter 29

It’s a hot August afternoon, all of them in the house strewn about in different attitudes with spare pieces of plywood to hold as fans and their dress in disarray. Even Oliver has taken to the discomposure of the household on this day, his white linen shirt undone most improperly given the ladies in the house, the ladies whose hair is pinned up like nests for birds. The Lady had made herself absent with Bonnie and Frank and the house was quiet and still in the oppressive heat. Oliver, with his fingers in sleeping Connor’s hair, thought everything moved slowly as molasses. Everything was in this manner for moment after moment until the screen door banged open and the stillness broke like a vase falling from a second floor.

“Everyone outside! Come quickly, damn it!” Annalise shouted as she strode in, her skirts rustling in a hurricane as she grabbed Wes by the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him with her, “Every one of you, quickly!”

It took a moment for Oliver to move, to run after their distressed Lady and towards the middle of the sea of grass that stretched before the house, tinted orange by the light of the afternoon sun. He could see Bonnie fallen to her knees, her skirts pooled around her and her face red and cheeks stained with tears. Frank on the other hand is bent over a bulk, his sleeves pulled back on his arms. Between them, Oliver finally understood, was Asher – his face pale and his body shaking.

“What’s happened, oh God, what’s happened,” Michaela all but screamed as she rushed forward and fell to her knees, “Asher? Asher look at me.”

“He’s been bitten,” Bonnie, says her voice broken, “he’s been out here God knows how long.”

“Frank,” Annalise says, her voice steady as ever and commanding, “fetch the first physician you can get your hands on, hurry for the love of God he doesn’t have much left.”

“Asher,” Laurel whispered shakily, falling to her knees by his head and cradling it on her lap, “Asher if you can hear us just hold on, please?”

“Give him room,” Wes says as he and Connor move forward, “find the bite and give him room to breathe.”

“His throat,” Oliver finally says as the shock passes and his instinct kicks in, “a bite of almost any creature will close up the throat, open his collar and check his shins for bites.”

A mess of hands fly over Asher’s still shaking body, tugging at his clothes, soothing the terrifying trembling, and searching –

“Here,” Connor breathes out as he reveals the bite under the ripped fabric of Asher’s trousers. It’s ghastly sight that wrenches a sob from Michaela, the bite an angry swollen red that threatens to take up the whole of his left leg.

“He’s not going to make it,” Laurel whispers.

“Shut up,” Michaela grits out, “shut up don’t you dare say such a thing.”

“We need to extract the venom,” Annalise says, “It’s the only way to buy him time.”

“I’ll do it,” Bonnie and Michaela say in chorus.

“Do either of you know how?” Oliver asks, glancing up at them while carefully avoiding Connor’s eyes. They both look angry and stricken and he’d back down if the situation where anything other than life or death. “I’ve done it before. Grant it, spider venom isn’t lethal but.”

“Oliver,” Wes says warningly.

“Oli no,” Connor hisses across from him.

“He’ll die if we wait another minute,” Oliver assures him even as he moves to take Connor’s place and push him aside.

“Oliver are you certain you know what you’re doing,” Annalise says with a weariness in her voice.

“Certainly not, but certainly more than anyone else present,” he admits, “Now please let me try to save him.”

He pulls out his pocket knife, the one he’s carried since he was a boy and used perhaps thrice. He knows the proper course would be to disinfect the blade, take Asher to a proper work surface, and have a better implement than a pocket knife and his lips to remove what he can of the venom – but things are what they are. He can feel Connor’s eyes intent on him every moment but he continues with his task.

“He’s stopped shaking,” Laurel says after what seems like an eternity.

“Is that good?” Wes asks, still holding on to Asher’s arm.

“He’s still breathing,” Laurel says, “perhaps it had not been too long since the bite when he was found.”

They look up at the sound of a horse approaching and all of them save Michaela part from Asher’s prone form when the physician dismounts and comes to aid him. He does not shoo her away but rather directs her in how to help him.

“Have any of you tried to remove the poison?”

“I have,” Oliver says quickly.

The doctor says nothing for a moment as he looks Asher up and down, working a serum into a syringe while he considers.

“Whether or not that helps is dependent on how old the bite was,” the man comments as he eyes the injury. “It seems perhaps it’s had some effect. Fetch me dressing and water, quickly.”

Connor squeezes his arm and runs back into the house with Laurel to look for the items while Oliver watches the scene at large. Michaela having taken Laurel’s place cradling Asher’s head and Wes staring down with the grieving calm of one who has stood in his shoes too many times.

Frank stands by, looking more concerned at the scene beside him than at the one below him as Bonnie clings to Annalise’s arm and the woman holds her close in an unprecedented show of affection. Or concern. Or pretense for the physician’s sake. Oliver does not know what to make of it.

“Will he live?” Frank asks.

“We won’t know that for a while yet,” the man says, as he takes Asher’s pulse by hand, “I would hazard if he makes it through the night then yes, he will live. But there is no certainty of that.”

The plain declaration brings another sob from Michaela, while Bonnie falls once again to her knees beside him.

“All that can help him now is some bloodlettin’, but I can’t well do that mid-yard. Best take him in and make him comfortable in any event.”

In any event, Oliver thinks, in the event that he live or the event that he die. Frank moves without any more indication and takes Asher’s frighteningly still body in his arms.

The process is slow and Oliver finds it barbaric though he had just done some variation of it minutes before. When it is finished, Asher looks well beyond death and the sight is too familiar – too like the stuff of Oliver’s dreams. Asher is usually a strapping man, the picture of health, but now he looks no more human than the specter of dead girls that loom over him at night.

“He’s going to die,” Connor whispers in his ear, as he comes to stand beside him. He says it softly, Oliver knows, not wanting to make the others suffer with the cruelty and coldness of his words. Too cold. That’s what Connor had once told him, that Lady Keating considered him too cold for some company. Oliver understood differently now it was just, when Connor cared, when it truly mattered, the harsh cold of honesty was what came naturally to him. In the face of death, in the misery of his adoptive brother and the grief of the rest of his siblings he could not hold the charming smile of persuasion that characterized his most prized skill. He could only be stark, open, and honest. So when Connor stood, hand at Oliver’s elbow and lips an inch from his ear, and told him that Asher was going to die – Oliver, inevitably, believed him.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha I TOLD YOU I WAS GONNA UPDATE TODAY. It's super short but it's here.

It feels as if he’s aged a year in waiting. The quietness in the sitting room is hard and cold, the shutters shut and the locks locked. The people in the room hold themselves like broken figurines as if one exhale will shatter them all. The sound of footsteps on the stairs sends half of them to their feet and Michaela’s nails into his skin.

“It is quite remarkable,” the physician says somberly, “there has been no recovery in the past day and yet he remains, no change at all. Most extraordinary for a man in his state.”

“What is there to be done?” Michaela demands.

“Nothing but wait,” he tells her, “perhaps send word to his kin if you can.”

“We are all present, thank you,” Annalise declares, “and thank you for your service.”

“Not at all madam,” he says with a short bow, “I will return in the morning.”

The quietness returns as the door creaks and clicks shut. Connor looks across the room and tries to meet Oliver’s eyes but the other man seems to be gazing far off as if he had heard not a word. Michaela releases his arm and takes up the stairs without a sound. The room takes a breath – and holds it.

Three days pass without change, the physician becoming increasingly astonished by the lack of turn in events. On the fourth day, life at the Whiteboards resumes though the quietness remains and Asher too remains quiet and unchanged.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” Oliver tells him as they look on from the doorway into the sickbed.

“Like a princess in enchanted sleep,” Connor teases in a whisper.

“Yes,” Oliver says, “exactly like that.”

“He was bitten by a viper, Ollie,” he says quietly, “there is no magic in that.”

Oliver turns to him, a curious look in his eye. “You’ve not traveled much have you?”

Connor frowns, feeling somewhat judged by his words.

“I have not,” he admits.

“Nor heard the tales of the faerie and the haunts,” Oliver asserts.

“Everyone has heard such tales,” Connor says, “as children. But there is nothing of that in the reality of life.”

Oliver reaches out, his face soft and wary as he cups Connor’s cheek.

“Ollie?”

“It’s nothing,” Oliver assures him, “a passing thought. Perhaps…it might do good to read to him. Or just sit with him.”

“Something has caught your mind,” Connor says, “I can see it.”

Oliver shakes his head gently and leans in, pressing his lips to Connor’s softly before stepping away from the doorway.

-

Oliver’s childhood was full of stories. When he was a boy, before his father married, he used to live on the tales of the night creatures and the spirits in the wind and fairies in the water. When he was a young boy the stories were full of wonder and magic. As he grew the stories turned into rumors, turned into legends and accusations. His mother, so many said, was the child of a sea demon. His mother, they said, had no soul and the body of a child and the lust of a woman. She was unnatural, they said, and godless. They told him that the night creatures and the spirits in the wind and fairies in the water followed her stain which lived in him and that they were after his mortal soul.

It was a lot of filth to grow up in, a lot of lies to find truth in, and a lot of magic covered in sin. But Oliver, he still opened his windows in the night time, still looked out at the shapes in the trees and saw eyes staring back at him in peace, still found himself walking out far out of the grounds until the ocean licked his toes and sang to him. It is only just, the first thing Oliver ever learned was to keep very quiet. So when Cook told stories of sprites Oliver and said nothing. When Dottie told him to keep his prayers and shut this ears to folk tales he nodded in silence. When Lisbeth called him wicked he did not admit so.

Still, there had never been calm in his heart as when he was out at sea. Some nights he thought if he stepped right off he would not die as men would but live a new dark and shining life.

Across the ocean he heard many stories he had heard before from people who spoke them with reverence and conviction. He translated words that not everyone was meant to see and learned things that part of him had long known.

At some point he decided he wanted nothing to do with who he was born to be, nothing to do with his mother – whomever she might have been. It’s only the Whiteboards, the grasslands, Rebecca and Lila, the Lady’s eyes dark and knowing, Connor’s skin cold and comforting – this sense of home, dark and shining, remind him of when he was a boy and the world was still filled with magic.

He walks around his tiny makeshift home, here and there reaching out and taking objects. He looks for nothing and takes only what is given to him, tucking these things into his pockets and humming songs that someone sang to him once, before his mind took note of things. With the same placidness and a song still thrumming from between his lips he heads back to the house, walking past Laurel and Wes and Connor, not paying mind to their questions as he continues on his thoughtless path. He can’t be sure where he is going until he is suddenly there and when he is, he doesn’t knock, but let’s himself in softly in.

“Oliv-“

“Do you want to save Asher? Wake him? Come with me,” he says,  “come on Bonnie he’s only getting further away.”


	31. Chapter 31

Oliver seems entranced as he marches through the house, an unintelligible mumble bubbling from his lips. He ignores all queries and call as he makes his way up to the study and pays no mind to Connor’s admonishments that the Lady was away.

“What-ever is the matter with your husband? Michaela chides. “Does he think we need more trouble-“

“Hush,” Laurel says as she stands and approaches the door to the study.

“You won’t hear a word through that,” Wes reminds her. They all learned early in their time at the house, that the study held sound like an airtight seal.

“Maybe he’s found something out,” Laurel whispers, “something about Rebecca.”

“I think Oliver would speak to me first-“Wes starts, but he’s quickly silenced by the door of the study bursting open with some violence. Oliver strides out, his eyes Connor notices, are set far off as they had been before. Connor starts after him but halts as he sees Bonnie chase after Oliver, red faced and harried.

“Oliver!” She shouts, “What are you –“

“Marches,” Oliver calls over his shoulder, “And a bowl of steaming water.”

He continues on his path without pause, leaving the rest of the room frozen. For a moment the oddity of the situation leaves a heavy blanket over them all. Then, all at once, Michaela and Connor start shouting questions, Wes starts after Bonnie who has started after Oliver. Laurel turns to the nearest cupboard, calm and silent, and takes a box of matches from the shelf.

The group crowds around the doorway as Oliver moves without hesitation. They watch as he pulls covers from Asher’s body takes a towel to wipe at the cold sweat on his inner body.

“Steaming water,” he repeats, warm but firm, “in a bowl.”

When none of them move, Oliver looks up and stares back at them, perhaps mirroring their bafflement.

“Connor,” he says firmly, startling Connor out of his dazed state, “Connor, boil some water pour it in a bowl and bring it to me steaming.”

After a second, Connor shifts into action and scrambles toward the kitchen.

He hasn’t had much occasion to use the kitchen at the Whiteboards, but his training under Gemma’s roof comes to him almost without thought. His body goes through the motions while his mind runs away from him. He wonders how Oliver can act so self-possessed in the face of all of their helplessness. Only then, then he remembers. He remembers Oliver facing all of their horrors with a forsaken love in his heart, Oliver in the swamplands carving a place of his own out of nothing, Oliver brought up as a stranger to his brothers.

Of course Oliver would, in the face of all this helplessness, know exactly what to do. The kettle whistles and Connors sets to purpose once again.

* * *

Oliver has little idea what he is doing, no concept of the science or craft behind his actions – but what science is there to a fairy tale? Watching Asher laying there, like a damsel in wait, made the whispers in the corner of his mind come alive. He could not say the voice was known to him, but it was clear. Somehow he trusted it.

 _“Hidden sorrow make to smoke,”_ she said, _“cleansing water made to steam.”_

Somehow it made sense to him, cleaning Asher from the inside. His actions were so immediate then, he startled everyone, but he could not find it in himself to care.

He uncovers Asher, the man’s breathing hollow and troubled. It takes a few tries to get the others to take some action, save for Laurel who is at his side with a box of matches in an instant. When Connor has run off to the kitchen, Oliver turns to Bonnie.

“Do you have it?”

Bonnie shakes her head, gripping the skirts at her sides.

“You’ve lost your mind,” she grits out, “you need air and you need to step away from him.”

“Nothing I do will hurt him,” Oliver assures her, “the worst it can do is nothing.”

“How can you be so sure?” she counters.

“May we please know what the matter at hand is,” Wes cuts in, “this is all terribly confusing and the commotion cannot be good for him –“

“He cannot hear us,” Oliver says, with sudden unshakable certainty, “that is the entire problem, Asher cannot hear us where he is. I’m only trying to fix that.”

“He’s speaking nonsense,” Michaela hisses, “get him out of here.”

“Oliver please,” Wes pleads, “explain yourself.”

Oliver shakes his head.

“I don’t think I can,” he says earnestly, “I think I need you to trust me.”

 “Take the matches,” Laurel says, extending the box in her hands, “and tell us what else you need.”

Oliver swallows and takes the box from her, no longer dazed but no more clear on his own.

“I need a fresh towel, the water I asked Connor for,” he says before looking up at Bonnie, beseeching her with his eyes, “and I need what I asked from you.”

Laurel moves to shove everyone else out of the room and Oliver finds himself alone with a living corpse. It’s so strange, the kinship he feels for Asher, for everyone else in the house. In months he has come to love them as brothers and sisters nearer than his own – save for Caroline of course – and he has never once questioned it, never found it out of sorts. It’s something about the house, he thinks, it’s something about the air of it that gets into your bones.

“Towel,” Laurel says with a bundle in her arms, bustling back into the room, “and Connor is making his way up with the water.”

Connor steps into the room carefully, his hands gingerly holding a blue porcelain bowl with swirls of steam dancing above it.

Oliver finds himself taking a deep breath, knowing what to do with no inkling as to why. He takes the towel from Laurel’s hands and folds it until it can lay in a neat square at the center of Asher’s bare chest. Next he motions to Connor, who comes forward with the bowl in hand looking uncertain.

“Place it on the towel, carefully,” Oliver says.

“But it’s burning,” Connor protests.

“That’s what the towel is for, just do as I say – please,” Oliver whispers.

Connor lets out a shaky breath and lays the bowl gently upon the towel which lays upon Asher’s chest. His breathing disturbs the serenity of the water’s surface, but the container moves along with his breathing, mostly undisturbed.

Oliver takes the matches then and takes his time selecting one until he can hear Bonnie’s footsteps at the door.

“Will you hand it over now?” he asks without looking.

He hears more than sees Bonnie move into the room, past Laurel and Connor until she’s standing at his side. She dangles a handkerchief, well-worn and monogramed and tear stained and rumpled and theirs. She holds it on the ends of her fingertips which don’t tremble or falter at all as he takes it from her, holds it in his own hand, and sets it aflame.


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit this isn't abandoned?

“I do hope I needn’t ask,” Lady Keating says. From his position on the floor, back to the wall, Connor can only see the hems of her skirts, the tips of her boots.

“As it stands it seems unclear,” Laurel says from somewhere on his left, “witchcraft seems likely.”

“What in the seven hells are you talking about?” Connor nearly shouts.

“You saw him! Boiling water is sensible enough for a remedy but lightning a used handkerchief over him?”

“Laurel’s fancy runs away with her, Madam,” Wes intercedes, “Oliver is attempting some form of remedy on Asher.”

“And it most certainly not witchcraft,” Connor declares.

“Quite honestly I could not care if it were,” the lady says somberly, “but perhaps keep such declarations discreet, Miss Castillo.”

“They’ve been in there for a half hour, Oliver and Michaela,” Wes sighs, “At times silent at times arguing.”

The hems in Connor’s view rise an inch and move out of sight. He prepares to watch her boots disappear in stormy silence, but instead he feels the startling presence of her sitting on the floor beside him.

“Let us wait another half hour then,” she says, as calm as anything as if sitting on the floor outside a deathbed were a normal occurrence.

\--

“It isn’t working,” Michaela chokes out, “Oliver it isn’t working.”

Talk to him not me, Michaela, you need to call him back.”

“I’m only a half-“

“This is not the time to undermine your blood, you brother is dying.

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Then stop pleading with him, when have you ever plead with Asher? Get him back here the way you would as if he’d wandered somewhere he shouldn’t – because that’s just what he’s done.”

Michaela turns her scowl from Oliver and faces Asher, letting go of his hand which she’d been gripping. She whispers a quiet prayer as she slaps him square across the face.

“Is this what al those years of posturing have brought us to Asher Millstone? Years of scoffing at father’s neglect only to leave me? How will anyone know how brilliant I am if you aren’t there to put your foot in it? We have to make this family stand for something more than our father, make our name stand for intelligence and honor. You were wrong, this household needs you. Everyone is going even madder with worry – Bonnie is all sobs in every corner of this house, madam won’t even hear of clients. We are every one of us holding our breath for you and it is quite enough Asher, it will do no longer. And don’t forget that you brought me here, little brother, you haven’t any right to leave me all alone here. ”

\--

“What is Oliver doing?” Connor whispers, once he is quite over the sight of his lady sitting on the dusty floor with her full skirts dropped about her.

“I haven’t the faintest,” she answers.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, which gets more of a reaction from Wes then it does from Annalise herself.

“That is very much your prerogative Mr. Walsh.”

“You said something about his blood,” he reminds her.

“Did I?”

“Yes!”

“Tell us what you know,” Wes says, his voice too soft to be demanding and firm enough not to be denied.

“What no one know is of more importance. Mr. Hampton’s mother – she was young and inappropriate by most accounts,” she says ,” and dead. There is little else to be heard of her. It leaves a lot of room for rumor. All that aside your husband is a well-traveled man. It stands to reason he has knowledge beyond ours in some subjects.”  
“You didn’t see him,” Laurel insists, “it was as if he were relating orders we could not hear.”

“Be that as it may I’ve no cause to expect anything but the most selfless of intentions from Mr. Hampton – a sentiment I am most unfamiliar with I must say.”

“You seem more earnest than ever madam, if I might say,” Wes notes.

She levels a glare at him, the depth of which makes him sink back into the wall.

“You all think I have no stake in whether one of you lives or dies is that it?

“My lady I never meant –“

“You may not be my children and that is all well – but you are mine nonetheless, my responsibility and mine to protect. This may not be a very affectionate family, but it is one each of us has chosen. So yes, I very much care that Asher is less living than dead. And if Oliver wants to summon spirits or preform blood magic to bring him back to us than we will let him.”

\--

Oliver holds Michaela close as she shakes. He cannot help but feel that he has hurt her, giving her a rope of hope to hang herself with. Try as he might he cannot explain his behavior or account for his actions or for his certainty that they would somehow revive her brother.

Her tears seem more bitter now as Asher lays beside them, utterly unchanged.

“Michaela I am – “

“Don’t,” she whispers against his chest, “at least you made some attempt to help him.”

“I wish –“

“There is no use in it” she sighs,” and you were so clever to ask Bonnie for her handkerchief- I saw her crying into it just yesterday morning.”

“I don’t know what I was doing,” he admits.

“I do,” she says softly, “you were trying to show him that he is loved. Even if he – it was worth the chance letting him know it.”

A quiet croak interrupts the empty silence, startling them both. They turn to Asher, his eyes still closed and his moth just slightly more ajar than before.

His chest rises higher and then falls another miserable sounding croak coming now obviously from him.

“Asher?” Michaela nearly shouts, falling beside him. “Asher are you awake?”

The sound comes again, though a word can distinctly be made out – liar.

“Oh Asher!” She exclaims, “Asher I do not care what nonsense you’re saying, come now, open your eyes”

“You’re a liar,” he groans quietly, his voice dry as burnt grassblades.

“Bon is not crying.”

Once the last of the words is whispered out, his eyes open and Oliver can’t help looking skyward and cursing in relief.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are all the fuel I need to write more honeybunches!!!


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